Rohingya Ethnic Cleansing - Updates & Discussions

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Al Jazeera World - The Rohingya: Silent Abuse

 

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RSS complicity in Rohingya Muslim genocide
Abdul Majid Zargar
Countercurrents.org

A SILENT genocide of Myanmar Muslims is in progress. Such is the urgency shown by Burmese government to annihilate its Rohingya Muslims that it has even used Gunship helicopters to fire lethal and heavy ammunition on fleeing Muslims. The international community is a mute spectator to the organized holocaust and 57 Muslim Countries, except with the honorable exception of Turkey, is watching the carnage with disbelieving eyes. UN has issued a warning to Mynamar sans any action. It has also issued an advisory to Myanmar to accord a legal status to Country’s Muslims without any response.

Indian Prime Minster, Narendra Modi, in his recent visit to Myanmar, has endorsed and supported the Burmese leadership in dealing with the unfolding humanitarian crisis. This amounts to a clear signal to the leadership to go ahead with its ethnic cleansing pogrom. In an earlier tweet, Modi had extended cooperation to ruling dispensation to deal, among other things, with counter-terrorism (read Muslim persecution) operations.
RSS wedded to its ideology
People who expected a different response from Modi tend to forget that he is basically and essentially an RSS man wedded to its anti-Muslim ideology and bound by an oath to spread it nationally and internationally. And the present anti-Muslim pogrom in Myanmar has definite & explicit connections with Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) founded in 1925. Widely regarded as the parent organisation of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the RSS is one of the principal organizations of the Sangh Parivar group.

Traditionally Buddhism has remained a peaceful religion with around 500 million followers around the globe. But in India’s vicinity, RSS has made deep inroads to radicalize the Buddhist society in Myanmar, Sri-Lanka and our own Ladakh. To achieve the objective, RSS and its tributaries use the time tested weapon of spreading falsified version of history to convince them about the injustice meted out to Buddhists during Mughal empire rule. The self-exiled Buddhist community from Tibet and living in Himachal Pradesh is also used as grist to the propaganda mill of RSS. Incidentally the capital of Tibetian Govt. in exile is in Macleod Gunj, a small hill resort in Himachal Pradesh.
RSS has a branch in Myanmar
Few people know that RSS has a branch in Myanmar fully beholden and dedicated to promotion of its wicked ideology. It is known as Sanatan Dharma Swayamsevak Sangh (SDSS). This organization has developed close relations and rapport with military dictators in Myanmar who have propped up characters like Ashin Wirathu to propagate hatred for Muslims in the country. This organization is freely allowed to indulge in political activities. How close RSS is to the military junta can be measured from the following report which appeared in ‘Organiser , the official organ of the Indian RSS, in its February 28 and March 5, 2000 issues:

“The 50th anniversary of the Sanatan Dharma Swayamsevak Sangh (SDSS) was held at the National Theatre on Mayoma Kyaung Street, Yagnon, recently. Secretary of the State Peace and Development Council, Lt. Gen. Tin Oo attended the meeting. The programme was attended by ministers and senior military officers. Minister for Commerce Brig. Gen. Pyi Sone; Minister for Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement, Maj. Gen. Sein Htwa; Minister for Health, Maj. Gen. Ket Sein were among the prominent persons who attended the function…The Secretary delivered speech at the function.

This report appeared with two photographs. In one photograph five military Generals including second in command of the military junta, Lt. Gen. Tin Oo, were seen standing on the stage in the midst of SDSS leadership wearing khaki shorts. In the other photograph leading lights of the Burmese military junta were seen sitting in the front row of the auditorium.
‘Bodo Bala Sena’ in Sri Lanka
Besides Myanmar, RSS has also made a deadly alliance with ultra-orthodox Buddhist organization ‘Bodo Bala Sena’(BBS) in Sri Lanka for cleansing minorities in general and Muslims in particular.
The marriage of ideological convenience with this anti-Muslim extremist organization can be gauged from the following Facebook post dated March 28, 2013 of Mr. Ram Madahav, one of the important functionaries of RSS.

“The Muslim population in Sri Lanka is growing fast…There are mosques and madrassas sprouting everywhere in the country. A rough estimate suggests that of the 1.2 million Muslims, every 50 households have a mosque. In Colombo itself a new magnificent mosque is coming up, so are in many other places. Increasing number of ‘burqa’-clad women and skull cap-wearing men can be sighted on the streets of Sri Lankan cities and towns now.”

Ram Madhav also noted that Muslims in Sri Lanka have been insisting on halal products. He noted approvingly that “the BBS essentially talks about protecting the Buddhist culture of the country from foreign religions. By this it also means the Christian missionaries who are trying to convert people”. He was happy to note that “the BBS has maintained that Hindus and Buddhists of the country should work together on these issues.” He ended by commending, “So far, the issues raked up by the BBS are worthy of active and sympathetic consideration”.

On Twitter, Madhav wrote: “Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) is able to capture the attention of the Buddhist population of Sri Lanka.” Bodu Bala Sena: A new Buddhist Movement in SRI LANKA.
The relations between Sri Lankan Buddists & RSS can further be measured from the statement of Sri lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesing when he visited India in September 2015. At his only public address, he said: “There were only two appointments in Delhi I wanted to confirm: one with Prime Minister Modi, and the other with the India Foundation.” India Foundation is a Delhi based core strategic RSS think tank.
RSS spreads hate among Ladakhi Buddists
In our own state, RSS is spreading hate & venom among the Ladakhi Buddists. As Ajay Shukla writes in rediff.com on April 21, 2016:

“Identity politics have spread to Ladakh, with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh instigating Buddhist groups there against the Muslims who comprise half of Ladakh’s population.
We, should, therefore, be least surprised if we witness more anti-Muslim pogroms in Sri Lanka, Ladakh etc. in near future.
The author is a practicing chartered Accountant. Feedback: abdulmajidzargar@gmail.com
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Rohingya crisis exposes the regional conflicts and threats
Abdur Rahman Khan

The exodus of a large number of Rohingya minority population from Rakhaine state of Myanmar has exposed the barbaric attitude of the quasi military government of the Southeast Asian country inviting global condemnation for a systematic ethnic cleansing and genocide of the world’s most persecuted people.

Myanmar’s presidential spokesman Zaw Htay las week confessed that 176 ethnic Rohingya villages are now empty after all of their residents fled during recent violence in Rakhine state. He said in addition to the 176 villages, some residents fled from at least 34 other villages. There had been a total of 471 Rohingya villages in three townships.
‘Catastrophic’ humanitarian situation
Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar are facing a “catastrophic” humanitarian situation, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said. He urged Myanmar authorities to end violence against the majority-Buddhist country’s Rohingya Muslims that has forced some 400,000 people to flee to Bangladesh.
Guterres said the situation in Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine was best described as ethnic cleansing. Myanmar army says it is fighting the militants and denies targeting civilians.

The UN Security Council “expressed concern about reports of excessive violence during the security operations and called for immediate steps to end the violence in Rakhine, de-escalate the situation, re-establish law and order, ensure the protection of civilians ... and resolve the refugee problem.”
It was the first statement from the Security Council on Myanmar in nine years. Such statements have to be agreed by a consensus and Russia and China have traditionally protected Myanmar from any such action.

However, amidst the global condemnation and protest, the Rohingya crisis has exposed the open economic and strategic conflict involving regional and international powers, mainly the two neighbouring country – China and India and the only superpower USA.

China has said it supports the Myanmar government’s efforts to maintain peace and stability in Rakhine state of Myanmar. “The Chinese side supports Myanmar’s efforts to safeguard the peace and stability of the Rakhine State,” China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said last week.

During the last decade has also found a shift in Indian policy toward Myanmar – from its opposition to the military junta to a more pragmatic, non-interventionist policy. This shift is mainly due to four factors: the political and economic development of India’s Northeast states, its increased interest in trade and investment with ASEAN, and search for energy security, and China’s increasing influence in Myanmar.
China’s growing interest
What is taking Beijing from siding with the persecuted Rohingya minority? Simple: It is the country’s geopolitical, strategic and economic interest.

According to an article published in May 2017 in The Maritime Executive magazine, a Chinese state-owned firm is seeking a stake of up to 85 percent in Kyaukpyu port, a strategically important deepwater port on the Bay of Bengal coast of Rakhine state, Myanmar. It is the latest acquisition in China’s Indian Ocean “String of Pearls” or “Maritime Silk Road,” a series of ports running westward from Malacca to Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Djibouti.

Kyaukpyu was known as Akyab during the British colonial rule and remained so until the military changed the name of the state that was also known as Arakan state which borders Bangladesh in the north and the Bay of Bengal to the west.

An agency report said a consortium led by CITIC Group won the contract to develop the port at Kyaukpyu last year would like to take 70 to 85 percent of the $7 billion facility. The deal would give China control over an oil receiving terminal that feeds a cross-border pipeline to Yunnan province, bypassing the Strait of Malacca, the strategic chokepoint between the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific.

The long-delayed pipeline finally opened last month, connecting PetroChina’s new refinery in Kunming with oil shipments arriving by tankers from the Middle East. It is expected to supply as much as six percent of China’s crude imports.

Kyaukpyu, which would provide direct access to the Indian Ocean linking Kunming in China, is of vital economic interest to Beijing. Kyaukpyu’s overland links between Myanmar and southern China can save travel distance by 5,000 kilometers for shipments to reach China from India and points beyond.
India joins Japan to counter
Beijing’s relationship with Myanmar presently has two fronts, the new capital Nay pyi daw (the seat of civilian government controlled by Suu Kyi’s NLD) and the Tatmadaw, the military.
Besides, China plays a key role in Myanmar’s internal peace process, wherein it now regularly mediates between Nay pyi daw and the various non-ceasefire rebel groups in the north. Beijing now steers some important organs of the dialogue process, largely through its dependable proxy in Shan State, the United Wa State Army (UWSA).

Recently, Nay pyi daw’s political approach to the peace process (through the 21st Century Panglong Peace Conference) has helped develop further China-Myanmar relations. After a request from Nay pyi daw, Beijing mediates, and logistically supports the Northern Alliance’s participation in the government’s peace dialogue.

There also lies conflicts of interests between India and China, wherein both are now (and long have been) competing for greater geostrategic space in the Greater Sub-Mekong Region. India, however, remains apprehensive of the fast-expanding Chinese sway in Myanmar. If seen in conjunction with the latter’s decisive inroads into Pakistan and the elaborate infrastructure that it has constructed in the country, this expansion not only spurs a two-front threats to India, but could also act as a spoiler in its desires to become a net security guarantor for the Bay of Bengal region.

Myanmar’s military appears to seek alternatives. The recent official visits of the Tatmadaw’s commander in chief to both India and Japan to balance Beijing’s influence in Nay pyi daw. India is providing the Tatmadaw with training in peacekeeping and endorsed Myanmar’s bid to join UN peacekeeping operations. The Tatmadaw has reportedly endorsed India’s Act East policy and agreed to strengthen ties with Japan. This appears a new move to support Japan’s “Indian Ocean Economy” and the Japan-India partnership to invest in Myanmar in major infrastructure facilities aimed at countering China’s influence.
India’s activated role
India is also the seventh most important source of Burma’s imports. The Indian government has worked to extend air, land and sea routes to strengthen trade links with Myanmar and establish a gas pipeline. While the involvement of India’s private sector has been low and growing at a slow pace, both the governments are enhancing cooperation in different fields.
In 2001 India and Burma inaugurated 250 kilometre Tamu-Kalewa-Kalemyo highway, popularly called the Indo-Myanmar Friendship Road, built mainly by the Indian Army’s Border Roads Organisation and aimed to provide a major strategic and commercial transport route connecting Northeast India, and to Southeast Asia.

Unlike it predecessor, the present Modi government sees real potential in Myanmar as a strategic “land bridge” to the tiger economies of Southeast Asia, and trying hard to develop a counterbalancing entity against Beijing’s fast growing clout in Southeast and South Asia.

Over the past three years, New Delhi has made an active effort to reach out to Myanmar along various modalities of bilateral cooperation, with military-to-military cooperation occupying the frontline. The renewed military-to-military framework, which extends to both the territorial and maritime fronts, was laid down during the first India-Myanmar Joint Consultative Commission (JCC) meeting in July 2015, where India agreed to support the modernization of Myanmar’s armed forces and to build a “professional and capable Myanmar Navy.”

Since then, New Delhi has slowly pushed up its defence sales to Myanmar. The basket of arms that India has sold to the Myanmar army and navy so far is bulky: 105mm light artillery guns, rocket launchers, rifles, radars, mortars, bailey bridges, communication gear, night-vision devices, war-gaming software, road construction equipment, naval gunboats, sonars, acoustic domes, and directing gear. What’s more, India recently inked a $37.9 million deal to supply Myanmar with lightweight torpedoes.

The naval forces of both countries have also made port calls on each other and conducted joint maritime patrols several times in the past three years.
Northeast’s insurgency dictates
At the outset, the key driver for this engagement is securing the India-Myanmar border regions, both the maritime frontier and the 1,624-kilometer-long land border. While several insurgent groups from India’s Northeast states routinely use the land border to enter western Myanmar – a safe haven for them. The Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal hold common economic and strategic interests for both countries.

India hopes that the Myanmar army will now play a greater role in keeping the Indian insurgents in its northwestern Sagaing Division at bay, thus fortifying the otherwise unguarded border. New Delhi particularly began to emphasize this point after the June 2015 ambush in Moreh, Manipur, which killed 18 Indian soldiers.

Since 2012, the Myanmar army has maintained an informal ceasefire arrangement with the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Khaplang) (NSCN-K), the biggest anti-India insurgent group in Sagaing and the de facto leader of the rest (including the United Liberation Front of Asom and National Democratic Front of Bodoland). Thus, while NSCN-K has not signed the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) so far, it maintains a peaceful status quo with the Myanmar army. The recent demise of its iconic leader, SS Khaplang, opens up space for second-generation leaders to step in, thus consolidating possibilities for further rapprochement with the Myanmar army.

Despite the return of a parliamentary democracy, the military still calls the shots in matters relating to security and border management. However, this peculiar dynamics could hinder India’s diplomatic outreach to Myanmar, as the Tatmadaw could operate on its own accord beyond, and perhaps in contravention of, the New Delhi-Nay pyi daw diplomatic rubric.

India’s current diplomatic template for Myanmar remains bereft of human security concerns. The Indian establishment appears apathetic about the humanitarian ramifications of emboldening an army that has been widely accused of serious human rights violations and subversion of democracy. This is particularly relevant within the current security situation in Rakhine, Shan, and Kachin states where some of the Tatmadaw’s actions have come under intense scrutiny of international organizations and advocacy groups, including the United Nations.
US interest unfolded
As super power, US claim to have an interest anywhere in the world.
So, it has the major economic interest in the untapped resources of Myanmar as well as the strategic interest in the Andaman sea and the Bay of Bengal that Myanmar shares.
Besides, US has the long brewed interest to bring war close to the Chinese border to keep the Asian giant engaged otherwise.

However, following signs of liberalization in Myanmar, the US government began the process of improving its links with it since 2011. With improving ties in 2012, the White House planned Ambassador nomination, the first since 1990.

The Burma Freedom and Democracy Act (BFDA), passed by Congress and signed by the President in 2003, included a ban on all imports from Burma, a ban on the export of financial services and a freeze on the assets of certain Burmese financial institutions, extension of visa restrictions on Burmese officials. Congress has renewed the BFDA annually.

On September 10, 2007, the Burmese Government had accused the CIA of assassinating a rebel Karen commander from the KNU who wanted to negotiate with the military government.

Later, US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, visited Burma in November–December 2011. In this visit, the first by a Secretary of State since 1955, Clinton met with the President of Burma, Thein Sein, in the capital Nay pyi daw, and later met with democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi in Yangon. The US announced a relaxation of curbs on aid and raised the possibility of an exchange of ambassadors.
In July 2012 the United States formally eased sanctions on Burma. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced plans in the spring of 2012 for a “targeted easing” of sanctions to allow American dollars to enter the country, but companies could not move ahead until the sanctions were formally suspended. Same month, President Obama ordered the U.S. Treasury Department to issue two licenses, one giving special permission for investment in Burma and the other allowing financial services SH/Militant threats feared In September 2016, Aung San Suu Kyi as State Councilor of Myanmar visited United States and which has set a mile stone for the relationship between United States and Myanmar issuing a joint statement in which President Obama is lifting the Executive Order-based framework of the Myanmar sanctions while restoring Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) trade benefits to Myanmar Meanwhile, the militant outfits sought to cash in on Rohingya crisis. There is a danger of developing a Syria like situation where the US and some Middle-Eastern countries collaborated in the name of Islamic States.

Security specialists in Bangladesh and India fear that the entire region of Southeast Asia could face another security risk if the militants become active surrounding the Rohingya crisis .Global jihadist groups and several international and native militant outfits have already exchanged such ‘jihadi’ invitations on social media.

The Rohingya crisis also created a scope for coalition among the militants, forced out Rohingyas and extremist groups near the Bangladesh-Myanmar border areas over the issue, security experts’ fear.
Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) – after allegedly attacking Myanmar’s security personnel – that triggered the recent violent crisis for the Rohingyas, declared a ceasefire from offensive military operations for a month, September 10 onwards.

The outfit, however, claims to have no jihadi ambitions. Al-Qaeda, titling the project as Burma Calling, called out to the jihadists of Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and the Philippines to go and fight against the Myanmar military.

Pakistan-based militant outfit Jaish-e-Muhammad’s chief Maulana Masood Azhar has asked his followers to get ready to take action against Myanmar where a brutal military campaign has forced nearly 400,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee to Bangladesh.

“We have to do something, and do it urgently,” Azhar wrote, adding that the Muslims were “feeling the pain of the Muslim nation”.

Hizb-ut Tahrir, condemning the oppression on Rohingyas and urging countrymen to raise their voice, pasted various posters on the street walls in Dhaka, Chittagong and other cities of Bangladesh. Al-Qaeda affiliate Harkat al-Shabab, in a statement, warned Muslims “especially in Bangladesh, Malaysia, Pakistan, India and Indonesia: know that the tragedy of the Rohingya today will be your tragedy tomorrow if you let them down and be silent.”

The recent call to jihadists by global jihadist groups over the Rohingya crisis is not the first of its kind. The Indian Express reported, ‘Indian intelligence believed Jaish-e-Muhammad operatives had helped train Rohingya jihadists’.

Jaish-e-Muhammad chief Azhar’s call has sparked fears that Myanmar’s crackdown on Rohingyas could lead to terrorist violence across the Rakhine state, reports The Indian Express.
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Rohingya crisis: Hundreds of Buddhists gather to block aid shipment reaching Burma’s fleeing Muslims
September 22, 2017

By: Samaa Web Desk

Published in Global, Weird

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NEWS DESK: Hundreds of Buddhists in Burma tried to block a shipment of aid to Muslims in Rakhine state where the United Nations has accused the military of ethnic cleansing, with a witness saying protesters threw petrol bombs before police dispersed them by firing into the air, reported The Independent.

The protest was testament to rising communal animosity that threatens to complicate the delivery of vital supplies, and came as US President Donald Trump called for a quick end to the violence that has raised concern about Burma’s transition from military rule.

The aid shipment, being organised by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), was bound for the north of the state where insurgent attacks on 25 August sparked a military backlash.

The violence has sent more than 420,000 Rohingya Muslims fleeing to neighbouring Bangladesh but many remain in Burma, hiding in fear of being caught up in more violence without food and other supplies, aid workers believe.

Several hundred people tried to stop a boat being loaded with about 50 tonnes of aid at a dock in the Rakhine State capital of Sittwe late on Wednesday, a government information office said on Thursday.

Protesters, some carrying sticks and metal bars, threw petrol bombs and about 200 police were forced to disperse them by shooting into the air, a witness said, adding that he saw some injured people. Eight people were detained, the government information office said in a release.

A spokeswoman for the ICRC was not immediately available for comment. Police in Sittwe were also not immediately available for comment.

Tension between majority Buddhists and Rohingya in Rakhine state has simmered for decades but it has exploded in violence several times over the past few years, as old prejudices have surfaced with the end of decades of military rule.

The latest bout of bloodshed began in August when Rohingya insurgents attacked about 30 police posts and an army camp, killing about 12 people.

The government says more than 400 people, most of them insurgents have been killed since then.

Rights monitors and fleeing Rohingya say the army and Rakhine Buddhist vigilantes have mounted a campaign aimed at driving out the Muslim population and torching their villages.

Burma rejects the charge, saying its forces are tackling insurgents of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army who it has accused of setting the fires and attacking civilians.

The violence and the exodus of refugees has brought International condemnation and raised questions about the commitment of government leader Aung San Suu Kyi to human rights, and prospects for Burma’s political and economic development.

Suu Kyi addressed the nation about the crisis on Tuesday and condemned abuses and said all violators would be punished, adding that she was committed to peace and the rule of law.

However, she did not address UN accusations of ethnic cleansing by the military, which is in charge of security.

US President Donald Trump wanted the UN Security Council to take “strong and swift action” to end the violence, US Vice President Mike Pence said on Wednesday, declaring the crisis a threat to the region and world.

Pence repeated a US call for the military to end the violence and support diplomatic efforts for a long-term solution for the Rohingya, who are denied citizenship in a country where many Buddhists regard them as illegal immigrants.

It was the strongest US government response yet to the violence.

US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Patrick Murphy is in Burma and was due to meet government officials and representatives of different communities in Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine state.

Military chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing on Wednesday visited an army camp in the state that was attacked on 25 August.

“This was a British colony over 100 years ago, we are facing the consequences of their reckless acts until now,” he was quoted as saying in a military release.

This week, Britain suspended a training programme for Burma officers because of the violence and called on the army to stop the violence.

The Burma military said five officers in Britain were being brought home and “no trainees… will be sent to Britain any more”.

 

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[URL='https://www.facebook.com/saverohingas/?hc_ref=ARTLun4bb1Mwr89t823pByuNXw7uXGvRiZ-BzRSDHpdroGFXvMn7LmzZ8YSS0PhVhto']SaveRohingyas
History of Rohingya & Genocide! (Part 1)[/URL]
The Rohingya are a Muslim minority living in Myanmar’s Rakhine State and adjacent areas of neighboring Bangladesh. They are not recognized by the Myanmar government as an official ethnic group and are denied citizenship. Their population within Myanmar has been estimated at roughly 800,000. Most of this population lives in the townships of Maungdaw and Buthidaung, where Rohingya are the majority, as well as in neighbouring towns and the state capital, Sittwe.

The Rohinyas are the majority population of Rakhine State which was historically the Arakan Kingdom. Arakan was an independent kingdom around 100 BC. That is even before Bengal was formed. Burmese Empire included present day most part of Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and parts of China. Arakan people were Indianized in their complexion.
It was a fair mix of mongoloid, and Indians/Bangalis which made the Arakanis.
They were Rakhine groups.
(Arakan before Bengal 001 AD)
(Arakan neighbouring Bengal, 700 AD)

There had been three major Burmese invasion of Arakan since 7th century. First major Burmese invasion in Arakan was in 1044. During this invasion Rakhines as well as Chakma fled Arakan and settled in south Chittagong. Chakma are originally mongoloid.

The second invasion took place in 1406 by Burmese King Min Khaung Yaza. The Arakani king Narameikhla took shelter along with large number of followers at Gaur (Bengal), the court of Bengal Sutlan Giasuddin Azam Shah. After 24 years in exile, with the help of Sultan Jalal Uddin Khan, Narameikhla got restored to his throne and changed name to Sulaiman Shah. Sultan of Bengal assisted him with 20 thousand Pathan army lead by Wali Khan on certain conditions one of which was to establish Persian as Arakan’s state language. When Narameikhla disputed on this Wali Khan took him as prisonerand became the ruler himself. Wali khan changed Arakani state language to Persian. Narameikhla later escaped to Bengal and sought help from the then Sultan of Bengal Nadir Shah.

1433, Nadir Shah helped NarameiKhla with 30 thousand soldiers and restored him as King of Arakan. After this event Arakan became province of Bengal as per the condition given by Nadir Shah. As a return of favour NarameiKhla (Sulaiman Shah) returned 12 feuds of Chittagong to Bengal. This is essentially the whole of southern Chittagong. Arakanese began to pay annual taxes to Mughol Empire via Bengal. Narameikhla appealed to Nadir Shah to let him keep the soldiers from Bengal in order to be able to defend his kingdom from Burmese forces. As a result, number of Muslim armies settled in Arakan who were sent by Nadir Shah to help Narameikhla.

(Kingdom of Arakan)
Bengali literature gained popularity from Bengali Muslim presence in Arakan. The great poet Alaol of Bengal was member of the King’s court. He introduced Nadir Shah’s system of coins bearing the Kalima as used in Bengal since Muslim conquest of 1203 and its fellows that the coinage of Mrauk-U was subsequently modelled. Later on he struck his own coins which had the name of the king in Arakanese letters on one side and his Muslim title in Persian on the other. According to historian M.S Collis, it took the Arakanese a hundred years to learn Islam from the Muslem-Mongolians. When it was well understood, they founded what was known as the Arakanese Empire.

For hundred years 1430 to 1530 AD, Arakan remained feudatory to Bengal, paid tribute and learnt history and politics. Twelve kings followed one after another at Mrauk-U in undistinguished succession. They struck coins and some have been found. In this way Arakan become definitely oriented towards the Muslem State. Contact with a modern civilization resulted in a renaissance. The country’s great age began. In 1531 AD Min Bin as Zabuk Shah ascended the throne. With him the Arakanese graduated in their Muslem studies and the great Arakanese Empire was founded. But according to Arakanese historian U Aung Tha Oo, all 13 kings including Min Bin received Muslim titles and state Emblem from the Bengal Sultans.

(Arakan shown part of Bengal Sultanate)
Names of the kings Muslim Names Reigning period

1. Narameikhla (aka) Sawmon Solaiman Shah 1430-1434 AD.
2. Meng Khari (aka) Naranu Ali Khan 1434-1459
3. Ba Saw Pru (aka) Kalima Shah 1459-1482
4. Dawlya (aka) Mathu Shah 1482-1492
5. Ba Saw Nyo (aka) Mohammed Shah 1492-1493
6. Ran Aung (aka) Noori Shah 1493-1494
7. Salimgathu (aka) Sheik Abdullh Shah 1494-1501
8. Meng Raza (aka) Ilias Shah – I 1501-1513
9. Kasabadi (aka) Ilias Shah – II 1513-1515
10. Meng Saw Oo (aka) Jalal Shah 1515
11. Thatasa (aka) Ali Shah 1515-1521
12. Min Khaung Raza (aka) El-Shah Azad 1521-1531
13. Min Bin (aka) Min Pa Gri Zabuk Shah 1531-1553
14. Min Dikha (aka) Daud Khan 1553-1555
15. Min Phalaung (aka) Sikender Shah 1571-1591
16. Min Razagri (aka) Salim Shah – I 1593-1612
17. Min Khamaung (aka) Hussain Shah 1612-1622
18. Thiri Thudama (aka) Salim Shah – II 1622-1637

The third and final Burmese invasion of Arakan happened in 1784 when it was Mrauk-U Empire in Arakan. This invasion had been considered by historians as a genocide for its ruthlessness massacre of the Arakanese population of both Rohingya and Rakhine groups. The Burmese King Budapawa attacked Arakan with 30 thousand soldiers and returned to capital in the east with 20 thousand prisoners. They destroyed temples, shrines, masjids, libraries and state institutions killing all influential Muslims.

During the Burmese invasion of Arakan, Chittagong came under British rule. British never tried to free Arakan from the Burmese. Burmese rule was devastating. History of an oppressive ruling started. Harvey says, traditionally Burmese cruelty was such that “to break the spirit of the people, they would drive men, women and children into bamboo enclosures and burn them alive by the hundreds.” This resulted in the depopulation of minority groups such that “there are valleys where even today the people have scarcely recovered their original numbers, and men still speak with a shudder of ‘manar upadrap’ (the oppression of the Burmese).”

The fall of Mrauk-U Empire was a mortal blow to the Muslims for everything that was materially and culturally Islamic was razed to the ground. During 40-years of Burmese rule (1784-1824) rule two third or two hundred thousand (200,000) of the inhabitants (Rohingyas and Rakhines) of Arakan were said to have fled to Bengal. The then British East India Company Govt. made no objection to the settlement of those people in the Southern parts of Chittagong region. Today the indigenous Muslims found in and around Mandalay and Central Burma are descendants of those Rohingyas of Arakan. Thereafter British occupied Arakan in 1824.

There was large-scale conversion of Buddhists to Islam during 15th to 18th centuries. Muslim influence was also intensified when Moghul prince Shah Shuja, brother of Aurangzeb, fled to Arakan in 1660. King Sandathudama murdered Shuja, but his followers were retained at the court as archers of the royal guards in which role they frequently intervened as king-makers. The Rohingya population went on increasing from centuries to centuries and they were in clear majority in 1942.

In 1941 Japan declared war on Britain and occupied Rangoon, the capital city of Burma. Due to Japanese aggression British forces withdrew from Arakan in 1942. The Rakhine communalists in connivance with Burma Independence Army (BIA) led by Bo Rang Aung massacred about 1,00,000 innocent Rohingya Muslims, driving out 80,000 of them across the border to Bengal, devastating their settlements and depopulating the Muslims in some parts of Arakan. According to Mr. Sultan Mahmud, former Health Minister and Member of Parliament from Akyab district stated that, “I refused to accept that there was a communal riot in Arakan in 1942. It was a pre-planned cold-blooded massacre.”

Below the number of Muslem villages totally destroyed in the various townships in 1942. They are: (1) Myebon in Kyaukpru District 30 villages; (2) Minbya in Akyab District 27 villages; (3) Pauktaw in Akyab District 25 villages; (4) Myohaung in Akyab District 58 villages; (5) Kyauktaw in Akyab District 78 villages; (6) Ponnagyun in Akyab District 5 villages; (7) Rathedaung in Akyab District 16 villages; and (8) Buthidaung in Akyab District 55 villages. Total 294 villages. All the villages in Buthidaung Township were re-occupied and rehabilitated by the original inhabitants and refugees after the war but not a single one in other townships. Soon the Rakhine Buddhists were streaming in droves from the north as the Rohingya Muslims were streaming from the south, and Arakan stood divided into two distinct territories, a Muslim north and a Buddhist south one. Since then, the traditional relation between the two sister communities deteriorated.

Habib Siddiqui identifies some of the major armed operations of intimidation & genocide against the Rohingya people, orchestrated by the Burmese government since 1948:

1. Military Operation (5th Burma Regiment) – November 1948
2. Burma Territorial Force (BTF) – Operation 1949-50
3. Military Operation (2nd Emergency Chin regiment) – March 1951-52
4. Mayu Operation – October 1952-53
5. Mone-thone Operation – October 1954
6. Combined Immigration and Army Operation – January 1955
7. Union Military Police (UMP) Operation – 1955-58
8. Captain Htin Kyaw Operation – 1959
9. Shwe Kyi Operation – October 1966
10. Kyi Gan Operation – October-December 1966
11. Ngazinka Operation – 1967-69
12. Myat Mon Operation – February 1969-71
13. Major Aung Than Operation – 1973
14. Sabe Operation February – 1974-78
15. Naga-Min (King Dragon) Operation – February 1978-79 (resulting in exodus of some 300,000 Rohingyas to Bangladesh)
16. Shwe Hintha Operation – August 1978-80
17. Galone Operation – 1979
18. Pyi Thaya Operation, July 1991-92 (resulting in exodus of some 268,000 Rohingyas to Bangladesh)
19. Na-Sa-Ka Operation, since 1992.

Many claims that the descendants of the Muslim soldiers and migrants from Bengal to Arakan who settled there since 8th century, are the Rohingya people of today.

The Rohingya people, then, are actually direct descendants of the Bengalis from very old times.

To be continued ……

(Historical Sources: Wikipedia, rohingyasinternational.wordpress.com/history & multiple online)

M Naufal Zamir
Socio-political Analyst,
Entrepreneur & Barrister-at-law
Twitter: @naufalzamir
Email: info@naufalzamir.co.uk Web: www.naufalzamir.co.uk

 

[Banglar Bir]

Rohingya crisis explained in maps
A visual explainer of the unrest in Myanmar that has forced around one million Rohingya to flee their homes.
Shakeeb Asrar | 20 Sep 2017 06:41 GMT | Rohingya, Myanmar, Interactive, War & Conflict, Bangladesh
Rohingya are a majority-Muslim ethnic group who have lived in the Buddhist nation of Myanmar for centuries.
The maps below follow the path of Rohingya from their ethnic homeland of Rakhine state in Myanmar to Bangladesh's district of Cox's Bazar, as well as several other countries in Asia, where the Rohingya have sought sanctuary since the 1970s.
READ MORE: All you need to know about the Rohingya
Where are the Rohingya located?
The Rohingya have faced persecution at the hands of Myanmar's military since the country's independence in the late 1940s.

In October 2016, a military crackdown in the wake of a deadly attack on an army post sent hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fleeing to neighbouring Bangladesh.

Similar attacks in August 2017 led to the ongoing military crackdown, which has led to a new mass exodus of Rohingya.

Most Rohingya have sought refuge in and around Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh.

Which countries are hosting the Rohingya?
About one million Rohingya have fled Myanmar since the first brutal military action in 1977. The majority have taken refuge in Bangladesh, but other countries in Asia and the Middle East have also opened their doors to one of the world's most persecuted communities.

Are there other ethnic groups in Myanmar?
There are 135 official ethnic groups in Myanmar, but the Rohingya have been denied citizenship in Myanmar since 1982, which has effectively rendered them stateless.

Which villages are being attacked?
More than 80 villages in northern Rakhine State have been set ablaze by Myanmar security forces and vigilante mobs since August 25, according to Amnesty International. Myanmar's government has said that nearly 40 percent of Rohingya villages had been targeted by the army in so-called "clearance operations", with 176 out of 471 villages emptied of people, and an additional 34 villages "partially abandoned".
Follow Shakeeb Asrar on Twitter: @shakeebasrar
Source: Al Jazeera and news agencies

'Who will take us?': Myanmar's fleeing Rohingya Muslims
Forced out of their home country, Rohingya Muslims share their experiences of crossing to Bangladesh.
Topic: Asia, Myanmar, Rohingya, Myanmar-Bangladesh, Human Rights

Rohingya warn of 'another Srebrenica' if violence rages
Members of Myanmar's Muslim minority urge international community to stop a 'targeted military campaign' against them.
Topic: Myanmar, Rohingya, Myanmar-Bangladesh, Asia, Aung San Suu Kyi
here.

 

[Banglar Bir]

Religion is not the only reason Rohingyas are being forced out of Myanmar
September 12, 2017 12.35pm AEST •Updated September 19, 2017 11.43am AEST
Authors Giuseppe Forino

1. PhD Candidate in Disaster Management, University of Newcastle
   
   
2. Jason von Meding
   Senior Lecturer in Disaster Risk Reduction, University of Newcastle
   
   
3. Thomas Johnson
   PhD Candidate in Disaster Vulnerability, University of Newcastle

Disclosure statement
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.
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Minorities in Myanmar, including the Rohingya, are resilient in the face of persecution. Giuseppe Forino, Author provided
Recent weeks have seen an escalation of violence against the Rohingya in Rakhine, the poorest state of Myanmar. A tide of displaced people are seeking refuge from atrocities – they are fleeing both on foot and by boat to Bangladesh. It is the latest surge of displaced people, and is exacerbated by the recent activity of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA).

Religious and ethnic differences have been widely considered the leading cause of the persecution. But it is becoming increasingly hard to believe that there are not other factors at play. Especially given that Myanmar is home to 135 official recognised ethnic groups (the Rohingya were removed from this list in 1982).

In analysing the recent violence, much of the western media has focused on the role of the military and the figure of the de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Her status as a Nobel Peace prize laureate has been widely questioned since the latest evidence of atrocities emerged.

She continues to avoid condemning the systematic violence against the Rohingya. At least the media gaze has finally shifted somewhat towards their plight.

But there remain issues that are not being explored. It is also critical to look beyond religious and ethnic differences towards other root causes of persecution, vulnerability and displacement.

We must consider vested political and economic interests as contributing factors to forced displacement in Myanmar, not just of the Rohingya people but of other minorities such as the Kachin, the Shan, the Karen, the Chin, and the Mon.

Major ethnic groups in Myanmar. Al Jazeera
Land grabbing
Land grabbing and confiscation in Myanmar is widespread. It is not a new phenomenon.
Since the 1990s, military juntas have been taking away the land of smallholders across the country, without any compensation and regardless of ethnicity or religious status.

Land has often been acquired for “development” projects, including military base expansions, natural resource exploitation and extraction, large agriculture projects, infrastructure and tourism. For example, in Kachin state the military confiscated more than 500 acres of villagers’ land to support extensive gold mining.

Development has forcibly displaced thousands of people - both internally and across borders with Bangladesh, India, and Thailand - or compelled them to set out by sea to Indonesia, Malaysia and Australia.

In 2011, Myanmar instituted economic and political reforms that led it to be dubbed “Asia’s final frontier” as it opened up to foreign investment. Shortly afterwards, in 2012, violent attacks escalated against the Rohingya in Rakhine state and, to a lesser extent, against the Karen. Meanwhile, the government of Myanmar established several laws relating to the management and distribution of farmland.

These moves were severely criticised for reinforcing the ability of large corporations to profit from land grabs. For instance, agribusiness multinationals such as POSCO Daewoo have eagerly entered the market, contracted by the government.

A regional prize
Myanmar is positioned between countries that have long eyed its resources, such as China and India. Since the 1990s, Chinese companies have exploited timber, rivers and minerals in Shan State in the North.

This led to violent armed conflicts between the military regime and armed groups, including the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) and its ethnic allies in eastern Kachin State and northern Shan State.

In Rakhine State, Chinese and Indian interests are part of broader China-India relations. These interests revolve principally around the construction of infrastructure and pipelines in the region. Such projects claim to guarantee employment, transit fees and oil and gas revenues for the whole of Myanmar.

Among numerous development projects, a transnational pipeline built by China National Petroleum Company (CNPC) connecting Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine, to Kunming, China, began operations in September 2013. The wider efforts to take Myanmar oil and gas from the Shwe gas field to Guangzhou, China, are well documented.

Pipeline from the Shwe gas field to China. The Shwe Gas Movement
A parallel pipeline is also expected to send Middle East oil from the Kyaukphyu port to China. However, the neutral Advisory Commission on Rakhine State has urged the Myanmar government to carry out a comprehensive impact assessment.

In fact, the Commission recognises that pipelines put local communities at risk. There is significant local tension related to land seizures, insufficient compensation for damages, environmental degradation, and an influx of foreign workers rather than increased local employment opportunities.

Meanwhile, the Sittwe deep-sea port was financed and constructed by India as part of the Kaladan Multi-modal Transit Transport Project. The aim is to connect the northeast Mizoram state in India with the Bay of Bengal.

Coastal areas of Rakhine State are clearly of strategic importance to both India and China. The government of Myanmar therefore has vested interests in clearing land to prepare for further development and to boost its already rapid economic growth.

All of this takes place within the wider context of geopolitical maneuvering. The role of Bangladesh in fuelling ethnic tensions is also hotly contested. In such power struggles, the human cost is terribly high.

Compounding the vulnerability of minorities
In Myanmar, the groups that fall victim to land grabbing have often started in an extremely vulnerable state and are left even worse off. The treatment of the Rohingya in Rakhine State is the highest profile example of broader expulsion that is inflicted on minorities.

When a group is marginalised and oppressed it is difficult to reduce their vulnerability and protect their rights, including their property. In the case of the Rohingya, their ability to protect their homes was decimated through the revocation of their Burmese citizenship.

Rohingya settlement near Sittwe. Thomas Johnson
Since the late 1970s around a million Rohingya have fled Myanmar to escape persecution. Tragically, they are often marginalised in their host countries.

With no country willing to take responsibility for them, they are either forced or encouraged to continuously cross borders. The techniques used to encourage this movement have trapped the Rohingya in a vulnerable state.

The tragedy of the Rohingya is part of a bigger picture which sees the oppression and displacement of minorities across Myanmar and into neighbouring countries.

The relevance and complexity of religious and ethnic issues in Myanmar are undeniable. But we cannot ignore the political and economic context and the root causes of displacement that often go undetected.

This article was amended after publication to correct the mislabelling of the Karen as Muslim.
https://theconversation.com/religio...l&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

 

[Banglar Bir]

টাইমের প্রচ্ছদে রোহিঙ্গা!
http://time.com/4951180/myanmars-shame-aung-san-suu-kyi/

টাইমের প্রচ্ছদে রোহিঙ্গা!
http://time.com/4951180/myanmars-shame-aung-san-suu-kyi/

05:50 PM, September 22, 2017 / LAST MODIFIED: 06:19 PM, September 22, 2017
India using chilli sprays, stun grenades to dissuade Rohingya influx

A Rohingya refugee child cries as others queue to receive aid in Cox's Bazar, September 22, 2017. Photo:Reuters
Reuters, New Delhi

India has stepped up security along its largely porous eastern border with Bangladesh and is using "chilli and stun grenades" to block the entry of Rohingya Muslims fleeing from violence in their homeland of Myanmar, officials said on Friday.

Border forces in Hindu-majority India, which wants to deport around 40,000 Rohingya already living in the country, citing security risks, have been authorised to use "rude and crude" methods to stop any infiltration attempts.

"We don't want to cause any serious injury or arrest them, but we won't tolerate Rohingya on Indian soil," said a senior official with the Border Security Force (BSF) in New Delhi.

"We're using grenades containing chilli spray to stop hundreds of Rohingyas trying to enter India ... the situation is tense," added the official, who declined to be identified as he was not authorised to speak to media.

More than 420,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since Aug. 25, when a coordinated attack by Rohingya insurgents on Myanmar security forces triggered a counteroffensive, killing at least 400 people, mainly militants. The United Nations has called the assault a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing".

Densely populated Bangladesh is struggling to shelter all the refugees desperate for space to set up shacks, sparking worries in India that the influx could spill into its territory.

RPS Jaswal, a deputy inspector general of the BSF patrolling a large part of the border in India's eastern state of West Bengal, said his troops were told to use both chilli grenades and stun grenades to push back the Rohingya.

A chilli grenade makes use of a naturally-occurring compound in chilli powder to cause severe irritation and temporarily immobilise its target.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist government is growing increasingly hostile towards the Rohingya in India, with Home Minister Rajnath Singh calling on Thursday for their deportation as illegal migrants.

Seeking to get legal clearance for the deportation plan, the home ministry told the Supreme Court this week it would confidentially provide it with intelligence information showing Rohingya links with Pakistan-based militants.

Most of the peaceloving refugees had no link to criminal activity, two Rohingya men protesting against the deportation move told India's top court on Friday.

An official of India's federal investigations agency said it was seeking help from Muslim religious leaders to step up surveillance of the Rohingya.

Police have arrested a suspected al Qaeda member they believe was trying to recruit Rohingya in the country to fight security forces in Myanmar. More than 270 Rohingya have been in Indian jails since 2014.

"Our investigations have revealed that Al Qaeda wants to use India and Bangladesh as their base to start a religious war against Myanmar," said New Delhi police official Pramod Singh Khuswah. "Clearly they are a threat to our security."
http://www.thedailystar.net/world/r...tun-grenades-dissuade-rohingya-influx-1466053

 

[Banglar Bir]

Int'l tribunal finds Myanmar guilty of 'genocide'
7-member tribunal calls on Myanmar authorities to put an end to violence against Muslim minorities
September 22, 2017 Anadolu Agency
Since Aug. 25, some 429,000 Rohingya have crossed from Myanmar's western state of Rakhine into Bangladesh, according to the UN.

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.

The tribunal also called on the international community to provide financial help to countries such as Bangladesh and Malaysia that are hosting the influx of refugees escaping the violence.

UN estimates $200 mln needed for Rohingya in Bangladesh for six months
The United Nations estimates that $200 million will be needed over the next six months to help Rohingya Muslims refugees who have fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar in "massive numbers" to escape a bloody military campaign.

Bangladesh and humanitarian organisations are struggling to help 422,000 Rohingya who have arrived since Aug. 25, when attacks by Rohingya militants triggered a Myanmar counter-insurgency offensive that the United Nations has branded ethnic cleansing.

Bangladesh was already home to some 400,000 Rohingya who fled earlier bouts of violence and persecution in Buddhist-majority Myanmar.The United Nations launched an appeal for $78 million on Sept. 9, but the refugees have kept coming."Right now, we’re looking at $200 million," Robert D. Watkins, U.N. resident coordinator in Bangladesh told Reuters in an interview in his office in the capital, Dhaka, on Friday."It has not been confirmed, but it is a ballpark figure based on the estimates on the information we have," he said, adding that would be for six months."We base these appeals on immediate needs, and right now we know they’re going to be here for six months.

"Myanmar rejects accusations of ethnic cleansing, saying its security forces are fighting insurgents of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army who claimed responsibility for attacks on about 30 police posts and army camp on Aug. 25.The insurgents were also behind similar but smaller attacks in October last year, that also led to a brutal Myanmar army response triggering the flight of 87,000 Rohingya to Bangladesh.Watkins said the exodus since Aug. 25 was much bigger than the flows sparked by ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s."It’s different from that here because the numbers are so much bigger ... massive numbers in such a short period of time," he said.Video:

Thousands rally in Pakistan to protest the persecution of Rohingya Muslims'SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY'The monsoon rains have compounded the problems for the aid agencies, turning roads into quagmires. Watkins said the United Nations was working with Bangladeshi authorities to build new roads.He said the situation had not stabilised in terms of new arrivals so it was difficult to say for how many people they were planning for, or for how long."We don’t want to plan a 10-year operation, obviously, because we want to maintain hope that there will be a way for negotiating a return of the population," he said."We can’t plan too far in the future because it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

On the one hand, politically, it sends a strong signal, which we don’t want to send, which is that people are going to be here for a long time."And our donors are not prepared to respond to anything beyond a one-year time frame given the massive amounts of money we are asking for.

”The Rohingya are regarded as illegal immigrants in Myanmar and most are stateless.Video: Rohingya Muslims slaughtered by fanatic Buddhists Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi said this week Myanmar was ready to start a process agreed with Bangladesh in 1993 under which anyone verified as a refugee would be accepted back "without any problem".But many Rohingya are pessimistic about their chances of ever going home, partly because many do not have official papers confirming their residency. Video: Humankind 'insensitive' to persecution of Rohingya Muslims: Erdoğan

Malaysia currently hosts one of the largest urban refugee populations in the world. As of 2014, some 146,020 refugees and asylum seekers had been registered with the UNHCR in Malaysia, of which the vast majority or some 135,000 are from Myanmar.

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.

Last October, following attacks on border posts in Rakhine's Maungdaw district, security forces launched a five-month crackdown in which, according to Rohingya groups, around 400 people were killed.

The UN documented mass gang rapes, killings -- including of infants and young children -- brutal beatings, and disappearances committed by security personnel. In a report, UN investigators said such violations may have constituted crimes against humanity.
Rohingya crisis in numbers
The number of Rohingya Muslims fleeing violence in Myanmar is increasing by the day. The extent and implications of the crisis remain uncertain and the numbers paint a grim story.
http://www.yenisafak.com/en/gundem/...glish&utm_campaign=facebook-yenisafak-english

 

[Banglar Bir]

What is a safe zone?
Niloy Alam
Published at 04:52 PM September 22, 2017

In this photograph taken on September 7, 2017, a house burns in Gawdu Tharya village near Maungdaw in Rakhine state in northern Myanmar. The wooden structure on fire was seen by journalists during a Myanmar government sponsored trip for media to the region AFP
Most recently, safe zones were a key part of the conflict discussions by the pro-Assad and Syrian rebel forces in the Syrian civil war
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina called for the creation of a “safe zone” in the Rakhine state of Myanmar for the Rohingya refugees in her address to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).

But what is a “safe zone” supposed to be?
Its origins lie within Article 23 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The article stated that during a time of conflict, countries could declare areas “safe zones” for people who are not involved in the fighting. It usually means hospitals and other localities to protect the wounded, women, the elderly and children from war.

However, in modern usage, a safe zone, as declared by the United Nations, is a vague concept that is thrown about regularly for its sound theoretical stance. They have the provision of including no-fly zones.

An area designated by the UN as a safe zone in a conflict zone is conceived to protect civilians from military attack. However, there is no written definition of a safe zone by the UN, only precedents to refer to.

In any case, safe zones have never yielded any good for the people they were set up to protect. Back in 1995, the UN declared Srebrenica a safe zone among six others in what used to be Bosnia-Herzegovina. The UN had even posted 300-400 peacekeepers to protect the Bosnian Muslims, in case the Serb forces defied the UN resolution.

Srebrenica, a small mining town in the mountains, fell to the overwhelming Serb forces who proceeded to annihilate 8,000 Bosnian Muslims. It is by admission, considered to be the UN’s greatest failure till date.

In 1994, the Hutu-Tutsi ethnic conflict in Rwanda led to the genocide of at least one million Tutsi people. Although there were safe zones throughout the country, the Hutu forces operated with impunity inside the areas.

Most recently, safe zones were a key part of the conflict discussions by the pro-Assad and Syrian rebel forces in the Syrian civil war. The safe zones were planned to provide humanitarian aid to the refugees.

As of September 21, a total of 422,000 Rohingya people have fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar. There are allegations of ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Myanmar armed forces. Given the precedence of safe zones and the condition prevailing in Rakhine, the Rohingya will be repatriated with the ashes of their houses, with more threats to their lives waiting for them. Without a strong UN peacekeeping force present, a “safe zone” is safe in name only.

The UN would have to establish clear grounds in regards to the safe zone and the international community will have to ensure Myanmar abides by the terms of the resolution.

 

[Banglar Bir]

Suffering has a name
Aung San Suu Kyi’s response to the crisis at home is starkly duplicitous and false
Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee, September 22, 2017

Suffering is universal and part of the human condition and life. In history however, suffering is quite specific. Suffering carries a name, sometimes of an individual and often of a community. Suffering has a face, or faces. Today we are witnessing the suffering of isolated groups of individuals who are victims of terror attacks. But we are also witnessing the deep violence against communities that are targeted in the name of racist and religious nationalism. These are forms of historical violence that do not fall within the general idea of universal suffering. It includes the collective plight of people, of refugees and minorities, who face majoritarian violence. These instances are often accompanied by the apathy of the state or its direct or tacit encouragement. These sufferers have a name. These names belong to people who suffer the logic of territoriality that dogs the spirit of history and the nation’s paranoia.

Rohingya is such a name. That is why Aung San Suu Kyi’s not mentioning “Rohingya” in her address to the nation, where she refers to the specific crisis at home in general terms, appears odd and deliberate. As if the word is taboo, the name too hard to utter. Rohingya is just not the name that designates a stateless Muslim minority in Myanmar, but a minority that is suffering majoritarian violence. The word is not simply a political category, but resonates with an ethical appeal in relation to their specific condition. It is a condition born out of historical prejudice and political malice. Meanwhile, the Rohingya crisis has spilled over, posing questions for other nations to rehabilitate political refugees. The UN raised eyebrows over India’s handling of the crisis, as the Narendra Modi government told the Supreme Court that the Rohingya people posed a threat to national security. The paranoia of security has become a legitimate logic used by the state to absolve itself of ethical responsibilities. Yet Suu Kyi, despite facing worldwide condemnation and petitions to strip her off the Nobel Peace Prize, maintained a disturbingly long silence.

Suu Kyi’s address comes very late. To be late is a problem, for it betrays reluctance and perhaps even refusal to address the nature of crime. This dubious style of responding late to serious crimes where the victim isn’t named is currently being pursued even by the political regime in India. Suu Kyi’s response to the crisis at home is starkly duplicitous and false. She said, “We condemn all human rights violations and unlawful violence.” That is a misleading statement, for she does not need to answer a universal problem but the problem of a minority. To say “all human rights violations” is to not mention the one violation which alone is everything that she has to respond to. That one is the singular universal. The universal cannot be reduced to the concrete one. It is a trick of language, to subsume the one within the universal and erase it. Erase its name. The politics of the universal is the politics of not naming (the one).

Universal suffering is not political. Only particular people in historical time have suffered violence. To take their names, mention their suffering in relation to their perpetrators, is our ethical and historical task. Not to name the one, in this sense, shows a lack of responsibility. All responsibility is ethical and for that reason, particular. No one is (held) responsible for universal suffering. The language of affectation is as much an ethical sensibility. The language of mourning is also meant for the one, for that one name who suffers, not for everyone, for any universal notion of the sufferer. To mourn is always to mourn for the other, for that one, bereaved other, who is the victim of fate or history. This is what the French ethical thinker, Emanuel Levinas, calls the “inter-human”, which takes cognisance not of the universal, but the particular other, the neighbour, who needs help, care or justice.

In her most recent interview to ANI, Suu Kyi reiterated the problem, pointing to the “controversies with regard to the term used to describe the Muslims of the Rakhine.” Her explanation reveals her position vis-à-vis this politics of naming: “There are those who want to call them as Rohingyas or who want to refer the Muslims there as Rohingyas. And the Rakhines will not use any term except Bengalis, meaning to say that they are not ethnic Rakhines. And I think that instead of using emotive terms, this term has become emotive, and highly charged. It’s better to call them as Muslims which is a description that nobody can deny.” The politics of naming is contextual.

In India, the term ‘Muslim’ is enough to name a minority being targeted by Hindu vigilante groups in the pretext of violating majoritarian sentiments. The political establishment in turn won’t name the Muslim in the pretext of not adding communal colour to crimes that are communal in nature. In Suu Kyi’s case, ‘Muslim’ is more politically suitable, for the term ‘Rohingya’ designates an etymology and history that establishes their relationship with the region, gives it pre-colonial status and disturbs the territorial idea of a nation-state. It is a term that contests the unitary claims of the “ethnic Rakhines” to be the sole, legitimate inhabitants of Myanmar. Suu Kyi is clearly siding with the sentiments of the ethnic Rakhines by shying away from using the word Rohingya.

No wonder that Suu Kyi does not want to name the name Rohingya. To mourn or take responsibility were not her intention from the beginning. To name that minority will mean two things, she probably wants to avoid: First, take responsibility for the condition of what that name, of what people who bear that name, faces today in her country; and second, to accept the suffering specific to that one community, of the minority she can’t wish away in the name of a fantasy she may call her nation. A nation where a minority cannot exist is a majoritarian fantasy. It is the minority that presents the problem of the one, for by naming her the majority’s claim is divided into two, and the majority wants absolute claims. Majoritarian politics would always want to deny the one its place, so that the majority remains the only, incontestable one.

The difference between Mahatma Gandhi and Suu Kyi is that Gandhi recognised the twoness between Hindus and Muslims. Remember Gandhi invoking the simile of “two brothers” in Hind Swaraj for the Hindu-Muslim relationship. In a historically unique and perhaps unparalleled gesture, Gandhi placed the Muslim demand before (prior to) the Hindu. When Gandhi said, “unity cannot be reached without justice between communities”, his placing the question of justice prior to unity is precisely to endorse the minority’s claim first. There is no need for justice if the majority is the sole, legitimate claimant to political power. It is the minority that introduces the question, the necessity, of justice in a nation-state in the first place.

In contrast, without recognising the minority, Suu Kyi said, “We feel deeply for the suffering of all the people caught up in the conflict.” It may easily mean both victims and perpetrators, as both are “caught up” in the “conflict”. It is a gross violation of ethical sensibility and intention. This political language that speaks for “all” deliberately hides the suffering of the one. In the ANI interview, Suu Kyi said, “We have to be fair to all communities. We have always maintained this that we don’t condemn either of the communities. We condemn actions that are against the rule of law and that are against the humanitarian needs of all people. But we have never condemned communities as such.” This equalisation of violence and victimhood is certainly not fairness. It is unfair to the beleaguered, outnumbered, persecuted people, who are at the receiving end of what the UN has called a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing”. Again, you find the politics of language where the one is subsumed by an apparently fairer concern for the “all”.

Apart from being a late response, Suu Kyi’s statements are strategically silent on meaningful clarification and intent. In the light of her language, it is difficult to accept her claim that her “true feelings are very very simple”. Both language and silence fall short of naming the violence. Silence is surely not the language of justice. Suu Kyi hasn’t spoken the language of justice yet. Something that hinders the idea of justice holds back her tongue. Call it the silence of prejudice or the prejudice of silence.

Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee teaches poetry at Ambedkar University, New Delhi. He is a frequent contributor to The Wire and has written for The Hindu, The New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Guernica, Outlook and other publications.
http://southasianmonitor.com/2017/09/22/suffering-has-a-name/

12:00 AM, September 23, 2017 / LAST MODIFIED: 07:04 AM, September 23, 2017
Rohingya crisis and the norm of R2P

With the Rohingya crisis spiralling into a disaster of magnanimous proportions, this maybe an appropriate time to invoke R2P against Myanmar. PHOTO: STAR
Mir Aftabuddin Ahmed
Sovereignty is sometimes an overused yet largely exploited concept in the world of international relations. In its truest sense, sovereignty is a fundamental term designating supreme authority over a certain polity.

Sovereignty has been used by some as a tool to continue the activities of authoritarian regimes, whilst others have sought to celebrate it through the practice of democracy. Realising the practical implications of misusing sovereignty as an international norm, the global powers initiated a 21st-century political commitment called the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). With the Rohingya crisis spiralling into a disaster of magnanimous proportions, this maybe an appropriate time to invoke R2P against Myanmar.

In 2005, member-states of the United Nations endorsed R2P to prevent four types of humanitarian crisis: genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

The Rohingya crisis has been recognised by the Bangladesh government and many global institutions as being under the category of ethnic cleansing. So, what does R2P entail? As a norm, it demands that national governments essentially do not take sovereignty for granted. R2P is based on the principle that sovereignty requires a responsibility to protect all populations from mass atrocity crimes and human rights violations.

Myanmar government's failure to protect a large proportion of the Rakhine-based Rohingyas makes a strong case for an intervention by the international community, either through taking measures stated in the R2P framework or by involving regional powers such as China or India to achieve a solution to an ever-growing problem.

Consider the case of Libya in which R2P was invoked to make a military intervention. However, one may be prompted to think that R2P automatically means direct military intervention on the part of the global powers. That is not the case. The basic tenets of R2P also involve measures such as mediation, diplomatic cooperation and economic sanctions as part of a mechanism to ensure that sovereignty is respected within a certain nation.

According to the R2P doctrine, “The primary purpose of the intervention, whatever other motives intervening states may have, must be to halt or avert human suffering. Right intention is better assured with multilateral operations, clearly supported by regional opinion and the victims concerned.”

But “there must be a reasonable chance of success in halting or averting the suffering which has justified the intervention,” it states, “with the consequences of action not likely to be worse than the consequences of inaction.”

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has already made it clear that her government has taken in Rohingya people purely on humanitarian grounds, nothing else. The Rohingya crisis ensued after the Myanmar government failed to exercise its responsibility to protect its own people from the horrors of ethnic cleansing. Considering that, many nations have initiated diplomatic efforts to pressure Aung San Suu Kyi into recognising the severe failures of her government with regard to Rakhine and the outflow of migrants towards Bangladesh.

R2P also covers an interesting point that makes it even more applicable for the Rohingya crisis. Its coverage is extensive in the sense that R2P recognises the fundamental rights of all people, whether one is a citizen or not—aliens or stateless. The fact that the Rohingyas are now stateless and being subjected to mass atrocity crimes means the R2P-bound international community has no option but to intervene to address Myanmar government's lack of accountability and action.

It also means that the international community has a moral and legal obligation, as per international law, to pressure Myanmar into taking action to prevent ethnic cleansing and simultaneously support Bangladesh in its effort to ensure the survival of the refugees.

Interestingly, it was a Bangladeshi—Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury—who helped shape many tenets of the R2P. Chowdhury, who served as the Foreign Affairs Adviser to the Caretaker Government of 2007-08, had worked as a diplomat to negotiate several paragraphs of the R2P norm. It is now up to Bangladesh to persuade the global community to act immediately based on those tenets.

Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali has suggested that Bangladesh is pushing for placing the Rohingya agenda at the UN Security Council, although it is unlikely that it will result in quick action thanks to the council's history of bureaucratic red tape and veto politics.

However, the European powers have supported Bangladesh's stance on the crisis, with UN-based organisations asking nations to provide concrete support to the Hasina government. While it is disappointing to observe India's lack of condemnation towards Aung San Suu Kyi, one hopes that both India and China will eventually overcome the practical impediments holding back a formal condemnation, and intervene to pressure the Myanmar government into ending what surely qualifies as ethnic cleansing.

Myanmar is a proud, sovereign nation with a rich history. The same nation is now ignoring the plight of its people, and pushing the country to the brink of unrest by facilitating the massacre of one of its own ethnic groups. Identity politics and the politics of power cannot, and should not, be used as a basis for perpetrating ethnic cleansing. Myanmar cannot hide behind its sovereignty status to cover up state-supported crimes.

The international community should seriously consider going for soft R2P interventions such as mediations and sanctions, and this seems to be the only way to convince a Nobel Peace icon that the path she and her government have taken is morally, legally, and constitutionally wrong.

Aung San Suu Kyi's chapter in history began with her bold, courageous and symbolic effort to institute democracy in her country. That she was able to do to some extent. But the world is getting increasingly disillusioned to see one of its greatest champions of democracy tread a dangerous and morally unacceptable path.

She cannot hide behind the curtains of sovereignty and democracy any more, as the R2P demands that she take action to resolve the crisis that her government and the military have undoubtedly aggravated.

Mir Aftabuddin Ahmed is a student of economics and international relations at the University of Toronto.
http://www.thedailystar.net/op-ed/mayanmar-refugee-rohingya-crisis-and-the-norm-r2p-1466200

12:00 AM, September 23, 2017 / LAST MODIFIED: 06:55 AM, September 23, 2017
Myanmar found guilty of genocide
International peoples' court delivers verdict

From left, judges Nursyahbani Katjasungkana, Shadi Sadr, Boehringer, Feierstein, Helen Jarvis, Nello Rossi and Zulaiha Ismal at the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal at University of Malaya yesterday. Photo: The Star Online (Malaysia)
Star Report

Myanmar is guilty of genocide against the Rohingya people, according to the verdict of international Permanent Peoples' Tribunal.

A seven-member panel announced the verdict yesterday after considering documentary and expert evidence as well as the testimony of some 200 victims of the atrocities committed against the Rohingya, Kachin and other minority groups in Myanmar, reports The Star Online of Malaysia.

Head judge Daniel Feierstein, who founded the Centre for Genocide Studies in Argentina, read out the findings following five days of hearing held at the moot court of the law faculty of University of Malaya.

On the strength of the evidence presented, the tribunal reached the consensus ruling that Myanmar has the intent to commit genocide against the Kachin and other groups, the tribunal said.

“The State of Myanmar is guilty of the crime of genocide against the Rohingya group.... the casualties of that genocide could be even higher in the future if nothing is done to stop it,” it added.

A preliminary unedited version of the judgment was available on the website of the tribunal last night.

The verdict came at a time when over 4,20,000 Rohingyas fled persecution in Myanmar to Bangladesh in last four weeks.

The influx was triggered by Myanmar army's response to alleged insurgent attacks on 30 police posts and an army base in Rakhine State on August 25.

The UN has denounced the “cruel military operation” against Rohingyas as “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”.

The panel, which included Zulaiha Ismail (Malaysia), Helen Jarvis (Cambodia/Australia), Gill H Boehringer (Australia), Nursyahbani Katjasungkana (Indonesia), Shadi Sadr (Iran) and Nello Rossi (Italy), made 17 recommendations.

It said visas and full access must be granted to the UN investigators for probing the atrocities committed against the Rohingya, Kachin and other groups in Myanmar.

The Myanmar government should amend its constitution and abolish discriminatory laws to give rights and citizenship to the oppressed minorities, it added.

The tribunal recommended imposing an immediate arms embargo on the government of Myanmar.

About the implication of the verdict, eminent war crimes researcher Mofidul Hoque said the verdict is “very significant” and sends a strong moral message to the world.

Also the director of Centre for the Study of Genocide and Justice in Bangladesh, he said the verdict clearly says that what's happening in Myanmar is not just ethnic cleansing; it's a classic example of genocide.

“The verdict gave a clarion call that United Nations and relevant international bodies must act to bring the Myanmar authority to book for committing genocide,” Mofidul, also a trustee of the Liberation War Museum, told The Daily Star.

This is the first time the tribunal delivered a verdict accusing a government having link with a Nobel laureate, he said.

Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and Myanmar's de facto leader, is now facing growing criticism over the Rohingya issue.

Tureen Afroz, a senior prosecutor of the International Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh, said the verdict established what prominent individuals and different countries and international organisations are saying: Myanmar is committing genocide and crimes against humanity against Rohingyas.

“The verdict will help draw international attention to the atrocities,” Tureen, also a law professor of a private university, told The Daily Star.

She, however, called for persuading the prosecution team at the International Criminal Court to initiate trial proceedings against Myanmar for the crimes as the verdict of the people's tribunal has “no legal basis.”

“And, in that case, the tribunal verdict will be helpful,” Tureen said.

The tribunal's findings, judgment and recommendations would be forwarded to international bodies and civil groups, said an organiser.

OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS
The international community must provide financial help to countries such as Bangladesh and Malaysia that are hosting the refugees.

Myanmar must prosecute perpetrators of human rights abuses, hate crimes, genocidal massacres, rape, torture, arson and ethnic and religious violence against the Rohingya, Kachin and other groups in its courts. There must be no more impunity for military personnel or militias.

An independent, non-governmental commission should be established to develop a programme for rehabilitation and compensation for victims.

Targeted sanctions, for example freezing of overseas bank accounts and travel ban outside Myanmar, need to be imposed on government officials and perpetrators of human rights abuse.

There should be a plan to escalate sanctions if the government fail in its general duty to protect its people and to stop the human rights violations by the military and private persons and organisations.

An independent, international non-governmental commission should be formed to investigate the causes behind the harms about which the world has now been made aware.

WHAT IS PERMANENT PEOPLES' TRIBUNAL?
PPT was established in Bologna in 1979 as a direct continuation of the Russell Tribunal on Vietnam (1966-67) and Latin America (1973-76), according to its website.

The Russell Tribunal, also known as the International War Crimes Tribunal, Russell-Sartre Tribunal, or Stockholm Tribunal, was a private body organised by British philosopher and Nobel Prize winner Bertrand Russell and hosted by French philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre.

It investigated and evaluated American foreign policy and military intervention in Vietnam after the defeat of French forces in the battle of Diên Biên Phu in 1954 and the establishment of North and South Vietnam.

Since its establishment, PPT is built around an international network of experts, social actors and scholars from several countries of Europe, South America, Asia and Africa, recognised for their independence and competence.

The characteristic of “permanency” and the selection criteria used in the appointment of its judges, renowned for their independence and expertise, have made this opinion tribunal a laboratory of denunciation and interdisciplinary research, it said.

Based in Rome, the tribunal has held 43 sessions on numerous cases involving human rights and genocide. Cases relating to Armenian genocide, war crimes in Sri Lanka, crimes against humanity in former Yugoslavia, among others, were dealt by it.
http://www.thedailystar.net/frontpa...-crisis-myanmar-found-guilty-genocide-1466263

 

[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]

Elderly Rohingya die on the way or arrive sick to camp
Many old Rohingya are close to death for lack of sanitary drinking water and muddy living conditions
September 22, 2017 Anadolu Agency

Rohingya plight through the eyes of the children
Saddam Hossain’s days had been filled with his parents’ love and affection. He was studying at an Islamic school in Myanmar. He had many classmates and playmates. But then, a sudden disaster changed everything.Saddam, 10, told Anadolu Agency that his father was shot dead by Myanmar’s military.“When my father was shot dead by the army, afterwards I fled with my mother, but I lost her at the border,” he said.He crossed the border with other Rohingya Muslims fleeing to neighboring Bangladesh -- one of 421,000 Rohingya who have crossed from Myanmar’s western Rakhine state into Bangladesh since Aug. 25, according to the UN.

He now lives at the Nayapara refugee camp.Suu Kyi must act to stop Rohingya crisis: US senator Saddam witnessed horrific scenes of the army hurling torches onto houses to burn them down.According to satellite images, 214 villages in Rakhine have been largely destroyed over the last month, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday.Saddam still seems to be in shock, as he has undergone major trauma.He has not yet fully understood that something has gone seriously wrong. What he notices is that he is living with many fellow Rohingya in a very small room.

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.

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.

Video: Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh submerged in water Families torn apart Last October, following attacks on border posts in Rakhine's Maungdaw district, security forces launched a five-month crackdown in which, according to Rohingya groups, around 400 people were killed.

The UN documented mass gang rapes, killings -- including of infants and young children -- brutal beatings, and disappearances committed by security personnel. Investigators said such violations may have constituted crimes against humanity.Karim Ullah, 10, is the eldest of a group of brothers and sisters who fled Myanmar.His sister Ajida and brother Sadiq, both aged eight, fled the county with their grandmother Sayeeda Khatun, 70, and are now staying in a school at the Nayapara camp.

Karim Ullah says that after his father was shot dead and his mother was taken away, the group of children hid themselves in a jungle with their grandmother.UK to suspend its military ties with Myanmar

On the way to Bangladesh, he lost one of his brothers and they only reached this camp on Monday, he said.His grandmother does not know what will happen to her grandchildren, and the children have yet to realize that their lives have entered a time of deep uncertainty.Naim Ullah, eight, has two brothers and three sisters.

Until recently they lived at Shilkali, Myanmar, and studied at a local Islamic school.With their mother, they fled the violent crackdown in Myanmar. For the time being, they are at the Kutupalang camp in Bangladesh.His father Badsha Mia, a fisherman, is still in Myanmar but, according to Naim Ullah, “brings daily necessities only at night” in his trawler.Naim Ullah’s grandmother, Kulsum Khatun, 75, fled Myanmar for fear of her life.However, the horrors she witnessed, being separated from her son and the rigors of the journey to Bangladesh proved too much and she passed away two days ago.

Video: Child-friendly spaces in Rohingya camps aim to monitor, prevent abuse
Traumatic atrocities

UNICEF says 60 percent of the fleeing Rohingya are children. Some 1,200 have fled without any other family members. The agency said those children needed $7.3 million in aid over the next three months to ensure their health.Rohingya taking shelter in Myanmar have welcomed Turkey's extensive humanitarian aid programs.“We always see many Turkish people here at the camps,” Mohammad Nour, a Rohingya refugee, told Anadolu Agency. “And they always bring us food and other things we need since we arrived.”

Turkey has taken the lead in providing aid to Rohingya refugees, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been pushing the issue at this week’s UN General Assembly.

Nour said he and his family had little time to put together their belongings before fleeing, leaving them without basic household essentials such as cooking pots, mats and blankets.Turkish aid agencies such as the Red Crescent, Disaster and Emergency Management Agency, IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation and Sadaka Tasi have been distributing aid packages containing food, clothes, basic kitchen equipment, hygiene materials, and household tools at camps.

“These people are overjoyed when they see us and our humanitarian groups because there aren’t many other organizations here,” Mustafa Demir, IHH’s regional coordinator, said.“This is not only because we help them, it is also because we are connected to them all the way back to the Ottoman Empire.”Demir warned that once the world spotlight on the region moves, it is unclear if humanitarian assistance would remain at current levels.

“It is now easier for us as humanitarian groups to access the region and provide all kinds of assistance to the Rohingya Muslims following President Erdogan urging the government of Bangladesh to give us easier access and assistance,” he said.

Maaryam Adhikari, a 46-year-old-woman living in Kutupalong, the second-largest refugee camp along the Bangladeshi border, said she did not have to struggle for aid because of the organized and structured help from Turkish agencies.“I don't have to fight others to get aid packages because they have us form a single-file line and they are very kind to us,” she told Anadolu Agency.

Suu Kyi must act to stop Rohingya crisis: US senator
Myanmar's de facto leader must act to stop the Rohingya crisis, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said Tuesday."Aung San Suu Kyi has long been dismissive of human rights concerns," Senator Bob Corker said in a statement."She had yet another opportunity today to stand up for the Rohingya minority in Burma but instead refused to acknowledge the military’s role in the ongoing atrocities."Burma is the preferred name of the U.S. government for the state also known as Myanmar.

His comments come hours after Suu Kyi claimed there has been no conflict or military operation in the country's Rakhine State since Sept. 5 despite reports to the contrary that show desperate villagers fleeing the area.

She said her government will grant access to international observers in the conflict-hit western state."As a national figure, Aung San Suu Kyi must demonstrate far greater leadership in efforts to stop the bloodshed or risk destroying her reputation as a force for continued progress in Burma," Corker said.

Prior to adopting her leadership role in the country, Suu Kyi drew accolades for her work to bring democratic reform to the military ruled country, which earned her a Nobel Peace Prize. But her handling of the ongoing crisis has led to calls for her to be stripped of the award.Since Aug. 25, around 421,000 Rohingya Muslims have crossed from Myanmar's western state of Rakhine into Bangladesh, according to the UN.

More than 170,000 newly arrived Rohingya refugees have not received any primary healthcare services, a senior UN official said Tuesday.The World Health Organization launched an urgent immunization program Saturday to vaccinate 150,000 newly arrived children.

The spokeswoman for the UN's refugee agency told a news conference in Geneva on Tuesday that 250,000 children had fled Myanmar for Bangladesh.During a call with Suu Kyi, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson "welcomed the Burmese government’s commitment to end the violence in Rakhine state and to allow those displaced by the violence to return home".

"He also urged the Burmese government and military to facilitate humanitarian aid for displaced people in the affected areas and to address deeply troubling allegations of human rights abuses and violations," spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement.

Turkish charity gives aid to 110,000 Rohingya Muslims
Turkey-based Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH) said Tuesday it distributed emergency aid among 110,000 Rohingya Muslims who fled Myanmar to Bangladesh after facing persecution from the country’s armed forces.In a statement, IHH said it distributed tents, food, kitchenware and clothing among more than 22,000 families. It also supplied materials that can be used to build shelters for 250 families.Seven wells were also dug up at refugee camps and the charity also provided transport to around 30 injured refugees, it added.

IHH Deputy Chair Vahdettin Kaygan said in the statement that around 10,000 children had been left orphaned due to the ongoing violence in the conflict-hit Rakhine state.Video: Heavy rain in Bangladesh devastates Rohingyas at refugee camp“Many children who migrated to Bangladesh have seen their own parents getting killed in front of their eyes,” Kaygan added.He also said 85 percent of the refugees were children at the Putibunia Camp in Teknaf area near the Myanmar border.

Influenza, pneumonia, diarrhea and water-borne illnesses were also being reported among refugees, the statement added.People who wish to donate can contribute 5 liras ($1.45) by writing the text “ARAKAN” to 3072.

Since Aug. 25, more than 420,000 Rohingya have crossed from Myanmar's western state of Rakhine into Bangladesh, according to the UN.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 Bangladesh, around 3,000 Rohingya have been killed in the crackdown.UN: 421,000 Rohingya Muslims flee Myanmar to Bangladesh

Turkey has been at the forefront of providing aid to Rohingya refugees and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said he will raise the issue at the UN.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.

Last October, following attacks on border posts in Rakhine's Maungdaw district, security forces launched a five-month crackdown in which, according to Rohingya groups, around 400 people were killed.The UN documented mass gang rapes, killings -- including of infants and young children -- brutal beatings, and disappearances committed by security personnel. In a report, UN investigators said such violations may have constituted crimes against humanity.
http://www.yenisafak.com/en/dunya/e...glish&utm_campaign=facebook-yenisafak-english

Indian minister calls Rohingya ‘illegal immigrants’
Rights activists, Indian Muslim leaders slam government’s plan to deport Rohingya
September 21, 2017 Anadolu Agency

Rajnath Singh
Rohingya Muslims settled in India are “illegal immigrants”, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said Thursday.

“They have entered India from Myanmar. We need to understand this reality that Rohingya are not refugees,” he said during an event in the capital New Delhi.

Singh said that no-one from the Rohingya community had applied for asylum, adding that the country would not be violating international law by deporting them.

The government is facing criticism over a plan to deport 40,000 Rohingya refugees and activists have demanded the withdrawal of the plan.

In an affidavit submitted on Sept. 18 to the Supreme Court, the government justified its deportation plan, claiming the Rohingya posed a national security threat through connections with terror groups.

“It is observed by the central government that some Rohingya are indulging in illegal/anti-national activities,” the affidavit said.

Singh added: “The issue of national security is involved with regard to illegal immigration which our country can’t undermine.”

A junior minister in the Indian home ministry earlier this month said government is looking for ways to deport Rohingya living in the country.

Zafarul Islam Khan, a New Delhi-based journalist and senior Muslim leader, condemned the government’s plan on humanitarian grounds.

“This is not a good decision,” he told Anadolu Agency. “This is a humanitarian issue and several countries are accepting the refugees while speaking against the atrocities.”
Persecuted minority
Since Aug. 25, more than 421,000 Rohingya have crossed from Myanmar's western state of Rakhine into Bangladesh, according to the UN.

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.

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.

However, security analysts have said the decision to deport Rohingya refugees from India is in the national interest.

“The humanitarian angle notwithstanding, India's stand on Rohingya refugees is to be seen from the point of view of the current global perception on migration, which is perceived as a security threat,” Samir Patil, director of the Centre for International Security at the Gateway House think tank, told Anadolu Agency.

“There are some genuine concerns on linkages of Rohingya extremists with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia... Therefore, Indian policy makers are doing best to secure India's interests.”

Last October, following attacks on border posts in Rakhine's Maungdaw district, security forces launched a five-month crackdown in which, according to Rohingya groups, around 400 people were killed.

The UN documented mass gang rapes, killings -- including of infants and young children -- brutal beatings, and disappearances committed by security personnel. In a report, UN investigators said such violations may have constituted crimes against humanity.
http://www.yenisafak.com/en/world/indian-minister-calls-rohingya-illegal-immigrants-2794101

UN scales up response as number of Rohingya refugees fleeing Myanmar nears 500,000

Rohingya refugees navigate their way around the Kutupalong extension site where shelters have been erected on land allocated by the Bangladesh Government. Photo: UNHCR/Keane Shum
By UN News
September 22, 2017
With the number of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar arriving in south-east Bangladesh edging towards half a million, United Nations agencies are stepping up delivery of life-saving aid to two official refugee camps, where the health concerns are quickly growing.

At the request of Bangladeshi authorities, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is speeding up the distribution of plastic sheeting to get as many people as possible under at least minimal protection from monsoon rains and winds.

“On Saturday, we plan to begin distribution of kitchen sets, sleeping mats, solar lamps and other essential relief items to an initial 3,500 families who have been selected by community leaders,” UNHCR spokesperson Andrej Mahecic told a press briefing in Geneva.

Refugee volunteers and contractors are helping newly arriving refugees moving into emergency shelter, but it is vital that UNHCR site planners have the opportunity to lay out the new Kutupalong extension in an orderly way to adequately provide for sanitation and to make sure structures are erected on higher ground not prone to flooding.

In total, more than 700,000 Rohingya refugees are now believed to be in Bangladesh; 420,000 of them have arrived in the past three and a half weeks.
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi will be in Bangladesh this weekend to get a first-hand look at the scale of the crisis as well as UNHCR’s response, and meet with refugees.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) said that camps are bursting at the seams and there is a huge risk of disease.

“WHO is very concerned about the health situation on the border between Myanmar and Bangladesh, given the very crowded settlements, most of them spontaneous,” said Fadela Chaib, the agency’s spokesperson in Geneva.

“It has been challenging to roll out the emergency response, not least because of the difficult terrain and the very heavy rains, and the fact that the population in question is dispersed, mobile and often injured,” she added.

Ms. Chaib said the greatest risk is related to water and sanitation, with poor conditions increasing the risk of vector- and water-borne diseases. Cholera, which is endemic in Bangladesh, cannot be ruled out. WHO has provided some 20,000 people with water purification tablets.

“Immunization rates among children is very low,” she said, explaining that when children are malnourished and exposed to the elements, the risk of childhood diseases such as measles are very high.

WHO, together with other agencies, recently launched an immunization campaign against polio and measles. Owing to the poor weather conditions and the continuous influx of people, the campaign has been extended.

Around 40 WHO staff have been dispatched to Bangladesh, and the agency will deploy a team of epidemiologists over the weekend to support risk assessment for infectious diseases.
For its part, the World Food Programme (WFP) has now reached at least 385,000 people with food aid as of today. Together with its partners, WFP feeds more than 5,000 people daily in the area.
“The situation is dire and WFP is on the frontlines trying to reach people as quickly as possible,” spokesperson Bettina Luescher told reporters in Geneva.
http://www.rohingyablogger.com/2017/09/un-scales-up-response-as-number-of.html

Sk. Hasina and Rohingyas: There is goodwill not political will
Afsan Chowdhury, September 23, 2017

In this Sept. 16, 2017, file photo, Abdul Kareem, a Rohingya Muslim man, carries his mother, Alima Khatoon, to a refugee camp after crossing over from Myanmar into Bangladesh, at Teknaf, Bangladesh. Picture: AP/Dar Yasin
Sheikh Hasina at this point is certainly more admired than Suu Kyi, but as her speech at the UN shows, she can gather a lot of goodwill but not the political will necessary to make Myanmar take back the Rohingya refugees. Her 5-point plan are more like appeals to a ‘conscientious’ world which in reality is a very cynical one. Sadly, for her, Bangladesh doesn’t matter much to the world and nobody is about to push resource rich Myanmar into doing something ‘humanitarian’. It’s obviously round one to Suu Kyi, a soiled icon cum military puppet and the Generals running the show in Myanmar.

The difference between Hasina and Suu Kyi on the refugee issues is that the Myanmar leader is a puppet by choice while the Bangladesh leader has been forced upon. Her proposals reflect that predicament of a leader without global power. None of the solutions she offers is in her hand and all are all up to Suu Kyi and her Generals to consider, making Hasina dependent on them as well.

As the most powerful politician Bangladesh has ever seen the situation must be painful to her. But she is harvesting at this moment, the collective failure of various governments of Bangladesh since the issue was born in the 70s. State bureaucracy, never encouraged to be pro-active has let the state leadership down.

Of the five points placed by her at the UNGA only is a call to practical action which is creation of a ‘safe zone’ a plan which the Myanmar government has already rejected. The rest are not going to considered because that would mean admitting that Myanmar had pushed the Rohingyas out and committed atrocities. Ultimately, the proposals are unrealistic because it depends on international political will not international goodwill to be enforced. And that is very missing.
Contradictions within Bangladesh
Bangladesh is also caught by its own contradictions. Rohingyas like any other refugee groups are not liked by Bangladeshis. Current sympathy is generated by two sources. First, the horror of the Rohingya refugee experiences as seen on media. And second, a common sense of Muslim identity. This identity part is a trifle complicated as it’s the Islamic groups that are pushing this and not the Government which is also aware that a religious identity generated movement as it may carry a large political cost.

However, sympathy is much less among many people living in the border district where the refugees have arrived. Public resentment is high there which was openly expressed in the initial days but are now muted as it would be interpreted as a ‘non-humanitarian’ expression which the official position now upholds. But refugee fatigue is inevitable and that may impact on Bangladesh’s internal politics.

The official reality is that the Government wasn’t expecting this latest huge rush and is being reactive without any preparation. Given that this is the third or fourth push from Myanmar since 1972 which each time has been bigger than the one before, those saying they never saw it coming are in denial. Why the authorities over several decades failed to see that coming remains a mystery. Even now, the main theme of the Government and its friends is “Myanmar must take them back” without saying how that is going to happen.

The authorities are caught between placing a “humanitarian’ image and a practical reality check of refugee management where it doesn’t look good. While the PM’s brave statement, “If we can feed 160 million we can feed another 700k” has gone down well with many, it is also pushing the line that Bangladesh can’t host such a large number of refugees for long.
A poor reading of what friendship means
Given the track record, Bangladesh may require a level of diplomatic capacity that it has not shown yet to manage the crisis internationally. Bangladesh is also in denial about its two main allies – China and India — letting it down. The silence of the official world about the positions taken by both is amazing though understandable. The statement of “support” by Indian Foreign Minister Sushama Swaraj has been described as a major diplomatic victory by the Bangladesh Foreign Office. However, this also shows that it has only a few inches of its foot inside India’s Foreign Office as it had no inkling about what the Indian position was on Myanmar though its Bangladesh’s closest neighbor in every way. China of course remains silent indicating that it really doesn’t need to even look ‘friendly’ in Bangladesh’s eyes.

Having trashed US for long, Bangladesh really hasn’t found the right language not to mention policy to make friendly gestures to the US. On top of that, the PM said, the US would offer nothing on the Rohingya issue though the Foreign office said that Trump will aid Bangladesh.

All in all, not a great phase for Bangladeshi diplomacy as it fails to mobilize global action which us understandable but also fails to present a policy based response on the Rohingya issue which should have been there. In the final interim audit, the personal image of Sheikh Hasina which has grown since the crisis began may be the most unexpected and only political windfall coming out of a crisis its struggling to understand let alone cope with.
http://southasianmonitor.com/2017/09/23/sk-hasina-rohingyas-goodwill-not-political-will/

 

[Banglar Bir]

http://yenisafak.vod.ma.doracdn.com...17/09/23/11f1e1af61264048aa8aebf861ac7416.mp4
Erdoğan speaks out about Rohingya Muslims
Haber Merkezi 12:37 September 23, 2017 Yeni Şafak
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called on the international community to take immediate action to end the tragedy of Rohingya Muslims. The Turkish president was speaking at an event in the USA.

Wish Bangladesh had a true Muslim Leader like him.

 

[Banglar Bir]

Rohingya crisis: UN to investigate reports of ethnic cleansing by Burmese military of the Muslim minority group
At least 400,000 people are believed to have fled over the border into Bangladesh
Caroline Mortimer
@cjmortimer

A Rohingya refugee woman is carried in a sling, through a swollen water stream in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh Reuters
The UN has announced it will investigate reports of mass killings, torture, sexual violence, and the burning of Rohingya villages in Burma.

At least 400,000 people are believed to have fled over the border into Bangladesh to escape widespread rape, murder and the destruction of whole villages in the western state of Rakhine by the Burmese military and mobs from the country's Buddhist-majority population.

Desperate refugees have reportedly been seen climbing over wire border fences in an attempt to escape and the Burmese military are reportedly laying land mines to ensure they do not return.
READ MORE

• Suu Kyi 'burying head in sand' over Rohingya 'horrors', says Amnesty
• Aung San Suu Kyi plays down Burma's Rohingya crisis despite exodus
• Rohingya refugees 'could starve to death' after fleeing persecution

One fleeing Rohingya told reporters that ethnic Rakhine Buddhists came to the villages and shouted: "leave or we will kill you all".

The Rohingya, who are predominately Muslim, have faced persecution in Burma for decades but there has been a fresh upsurge in violence against them since 25 August after a small group of Islamist militants attacked 30 police stations and a military base.

The UN has previously said the violence was a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing" and urged the Burmese military to end operations in the region, grant access to humanitarian groups and commit to aiding the safe return of civilians to their homes.

The chairman of the fact-finding mission, Marzuki Darusman asked the Human Rights Council for a further six months to investigate the violence – taking it up to September 2018.

He said the team "will go where the evidence leads us" but warned that he still needs a clear signal from the Burmese government that they will be allowed into the country.

He also called for the Burmese government to release its own investigation in the violence in Rakhine state which was completed in August.

But the Burmese ambassador to the UN, Htin Lynn, said the investigation was "not a helpful course of action" and said Burma was taking proportionate security measures against terrorists to restore peace.

Although there has been a small upswing in militant activity among the Rohingya in recent years, the overwhelming majority of the population has remained peaceful in spite of the violence against them.

READ MORE
Suu Kyi 'burying head in sand' over Rohingya 'horrors', says Amnesty
The Burmese government officially claims the Rohingya are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh but the community can trace back its roots in Burma for centuries.

They are denied full citizenship, have little access to healthcare or education and their movements are strictly controlled by the military.

Burma's civil leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has rejected international condemnation of the violence and claimed the country does not fear global "scrutiny".

She invited diplomats to visit Rakhine to see for themselves what was going on and claimed that "more than half" of Rohingya villages remained intact.
Additional reporting by Reuters
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...im-minority-villages-bangladesh-a7954626.html

Rohingya crisis: UN to investigate reports of ethnic cleansing by Burmese military of the Muslim minority group
At least 400,000 people are believed to have fled over the border into Bangladesh
Caroline Mortimer
@cjmortimer The Independent Online

A Rohingya refugee woman is carried in a sling, through a swollen water stream in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh Reuters
The UN has announced it will investigate reports of mass killings, torture, sexual violence, and the burning of Rohingya villages in Burma.

At least 400,000 people are believed to have fled over the border into Bangladesh to escape widespread rape, murder and the destruction of whole villages in the western state of Rakhine by the Burmese military and mobs from the country's Buddhist-majority population.

Desperate refugees have reportedly been seen climbing over wire border fences in an attempt to escape and the Burmese military are reportedly laying land mines to ensure they do not return.
READ MORE

• Suu Kyi 'burying head in sand' over Rohingya 'horrors', says Amnesty
• Aung San Suu Kyi plays down Burma's Rohingya crisis despite exodus
• Rohingya refugees 'could starve to death' after fleeing persecution

One fleeing Rohingya told reporters that ethnic Rakhine Buddhists came to the villages and shouted: "leave or we will kill you all".

The Rohingya, who are predominately Muslim, have faced persecution in Burma for decades but there has been a fresh upsurge in violence against them since 25 August after a small group of Islamist militants attacked 30 police stations and a military base.

The UN has previously said the violence was a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing" and urged the Burmese military to end operations in the region, grant access to humanitarian groups and commit to aiding the safe return of civilians to their homes.

The chairman of the fact-finding mission, Marzuki Darusman asked the Human Rights Council for a further six months to investigate the violence – taking it up to September 2018.

In pictures: Rohinga refugees in Bangladesh
He said the team "will go where the evidence leads us" but warned that he still needs a clear signal from the Burmese government that they will be allowed into the country.

He also called for the Burmese government to release its own investigation in the violence in Rakhine state which was completed in August.

But the Burmese ambassador to the UN, Htin Lynn, said the investigation was "not a helpful course of action" and said Burma was taking proportionate security measures against terrorists to restore peace.

Although there has been a small upswing in militant activity among the Rohingya in recent years, the overwhelming majority of the population has remained peaceful in spite of the violence against them.

READ MORE
Suu Kyi 'burying head in sand' over Rohingya 'horrors', says Amnesty
The Burmese government officially claims the Rohingya are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh but the community can trace back its roots in Burma for centuries.

They are denied full citizenship, have little access to healthcare or education and their movements are strictly controlled by the military.

Burma's civil leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has rejected international condemnation of the violence and claimed the country does not fear global "scrutiny".

She invited diplomats to visit Rakhine to see for themselves what was going on and claimed that "more than half" of Rohingya villages remained intact.
Additional reporting by Reuters
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...im-minority-villages-bangladesh-a7954626.html

‘We are not terrorists’ – an exclusive interview with an ARSA commander
Syed Zain Al-MahmoodManik Miazee
Published at 11:34 PM September 23, 2017
Last updated at 02:03 PM September 24, 2017

Abdus Shakoor, a commander of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army in the Maungdaw district in northern Rakhine Syed Zain Al-Mahmood/Dhaka Tribune
An Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army commander in an exclusive interview with the Dhaka Tribune recounts the story of the August 25 attack on a Myanmar border guard post and claims that his outfit isn’t a terrorist organisation
The man sat slumped in a chair inside the thatched hut, the shadows lengthening over his face in the gathering dusk. Tall and gaunt, he was in his mid-twenties but sounded younger. Wearing a traditional blue-and-white check lungi and a cotton shirt, he did not really look like a rebel.

His youthful voice hardened, however, as he reeled off the names of the villages which had been burnt down by the Myanmar army in his home state of Rakhine since August 25, when his organisation attacked border posts and an army base, an operation in which he took part with “200 men from our area.”

“We hit their soldiers, they hit our women and children,” he said. “The Burmese military are cowards.”

An intermediary introduced him as Abdus Shakoor, a commander of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army or ARSA in the Maungdaw district in northern Rakhine. We met him near a barbed wire fence separating Bangladesh and Myanmar after a long trek through swaying rice fields and rolling hills, a deceptively pristine setting for a desperate tale of loss, recklessness and forlorn hope.

After a succession of guides took turns to lead us through a maze of dirt tracks, we came upon a cluster of huts. Children played in a clearing nearby. Chickens scrabbled in the dirt. There were no guns in sight. It was oddly appropriate for the insurgency that Shakoor was describing – almost entirely rural, a peasant war fought in the Rakhine countryside.

The meeting with the ARSA commander was set up after a week of enquiries, dead-ends, and several false starts. ARSA fighters are under severe pressure from the Myanmar army, which has reacted to the August 25 attacks with a scorched-earth campaign that the UN and international human rights groups have denounced as ethnic cleansing.
Yangon has denied that the security forces have targeted civilians, claiming that the army is trying to hunt down terrorists.

It is an accusation to which Shakoor is extremely sensitive. “We are not terrorists,” he said, using the English word, which he pronounced as ‘tetarist.’ “We stood up for our haqq, our rights. There’s nothing else that we want, nothing!”

The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), a group previously known as Harakah al-Yaqin, or “Faith Movement,” attacked border guard posts, police stations, and army bases on August 25, killing at least 10 policemen and an army soldier.

Shakoor described why and how his group planned and carried out the attack.

“Our zimmadars or elders said we must fight back because the Myanmar government was starving us, killing us slowly. They slaughter our people for no reason, they dishonour our women. They want to uproot us from the land that was handed down from our forefathers.

“To save our people, to save our mothers and sisters, to take back our rights, we took up sticks, and axes and knives and rose up against the oppressors.”

For several nights before the attack, his men took stock of the situation around the army post, he said, noting troop strength, weapons and duty shifts. Similar preparations were taken in other districts in Rakhine.

Then around 1am, the coordinated attacks began.

Although some units in other parts of Rakhine had a small number of firearms, his fighters didn’t have guns, Shakoor said. “We just had knives and axes and some homemade bombs that didn’t explode,” he said almost ruefully.

That statement seems to tally with an official statement from the Myanmar army released on August 26. “In the early morning at 1am, the extremist Bengali insurgents started their attack on the police post … with the man-made bombs and small weapons,” said the army, referring to the Rohingya with the derogatory term implying they are interlopers from Bangladesh.

“If we had weapons, we would have defeated them,” Shakoor said. “We knew we were going up against guns and mortars. We resolved to die so our people could live free.”

He said he carried an axe that he used to chop wood and a couple of Molotov cocktails. His men had hoped that the Myanmar soldiers would be asleep. “We had the numbers. But maybe they had advance warning, because they started firing as soon as we approached.”

The army response – a “clearance operation” – has pushed 400,000 Rohingyas out of Rakhine. Did he think the attack on the army base and the outposts were a mistake?

He paused for a moment before responding, “Our zimmadars made decisions that we thought were necessary under those circumstances.”

Shakoor claimed that the Al-Yaqeen outfit has given rise to a potent insurgency, which has grown in size and morphed from an armed group of a few hundred men into something more akin to a widespread movement.

“Our qaum – or people – support us,” he said. “They know what we want. If the Shaan or Karen people in Myanmar can fight for their rights, so can we.”

He is quick to point out that his outfit hasn’t attacked civilians. “We have nothing against Rakhine people or any other people,” he claimed. “The huqumat or regime is guilty of oppression.”

Shakoor joined ARSA just under a year ago, after the group came out of nowhere to stage attacks on Myanmar police posts, killing nine policemen in October 2016. He was a student at a clandestine madrasa in Maungdaw near the river Naf. The Myanmar authorities had banned schools and madrasas and placed restrictions on the Rohingya which denied them education, he said. “We even have to study in secret,” he said.

The ARSA group is led by a man believed to have been born into a Rohingya family in Pakistan who goes by the name Ata Ullah.

Shakoor said he had never seen Ata Ullah. “He is the ameer (commander or leader in Arabic) and our zimmadaar (senior officials) relay his instructions verbally or through audio-video recordings.”

Because Shakoor had some education, he was quickly appointed a supervisor and then a commander. Now, he says the future is uncertain.

“We want the international community to help us,” he said. “We want nothing more than to live in peace as human beings.”

As the darkness deepens and the hut is illuminated by a single bulb powered by a solar panel placed in the yard, Shakoor says his people are grateful to Bangladesh for allowing 400,000 Rohingya to take refuge in the country.

“Bangladeshis have done a great thing by helping our women and children,” he said. “They have acted like human beings.”
http://www.dhakatribune.com/world/south-asia/2017/09/23/we-resolved-die-our-people-live-free/

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HRW: Myanmar landmines deadly for fleeing Rohingya

• Tribune Desk
• Published at 01:39 PM September 24, 2017

File Photo: A Rohingya man carrying his belongings approaches the Bangladesh-Myanmar border in Bandarban, an area under Cox's Bazar authority, Bangladesh, August 29, 2017 Reuters
According to witness accounts, independent reporting, and photo and video recordings, Myanmar soldiers have in recent weeks laid anti-personnel landmines at key crossing points on the country's border with Bangladesh
Myanmar security forces have laid landmines during attacks on villages and along the Bangladesh border – posing a grave risk to Rohingya Muslims fleeing atrocities, said Human Rights Watch (HRW) in a press release issued on Saturday.

HRW suggested that the Myanmar government immediately stops using anti-personnel landmines and join the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty.

HRW South Asia Director Meenakshi Ganguly said: “The dangers faced by thousands of Rohingya fleeing atrocities in Burma [Myanmar] are deadly enough without adding landmines to the mix.” She said Myanmar military needs to stop using these banned weapons “which kill and maim without distinction.”

According to witness accounts, independent reporting, and photo and video recordings, Myanmar soldiers have in recent weeks laid anti-personnel landmines at key crossing points on the country’s border with Bangladesh.

Witnesses told HRW that Myanmar military personnel also planted mines on roads inside northern Rakhine state prior to their attacks on mainly Rohingya villages. Myanmar government, in turn, has accused the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) of using improvised explosive devices (IEDs) against infrastructure and security forces, HRW reported.

Two Rohingya refugees from inner areas of Rakhine state – one from Buthidaung and another from Rathedaung township – told HRW they saw the Myanmar military planting anti-personnel mines on roads as the military entered and attacked villagers.

Mohammad, 39, told HRW, he saw a neighbour’s son stepped on one of the mines laid by the military. The mine blew his right leg off.

HRW said that a landmine exploded on a path used by many refugees near the hamlets of Taung Pyo Let Yar – about 200 meters from the Bangladesh border – on September 4.

The rights organisation witnessed “smoke arising from the hamlets, suggesting burning by the military that caused villagers to flee.”

The next day, three Rohingya men were wounded in three separate landmine explosions near the same border point, HRW said.
Also Read – Landmine explosion kills 3 Rohingyas on Myanmar border
Since late August, Myanmar security forces, following a coordinated attack by ARSA militants, have carried out “a campaign of ethnic cleansing involving mass arson, killing, and other abuses against the Rohingya population” – causing the flight of more than 420,000 people to neighboring Bangladesh, the rights group further said.

HRW have also has called on members of the United Nations Security Council to hold a public meeting and adopt a resolution that condemns the Myanmar military’s ethnic cleansing campaign and threatens to impose further measures, including targeted sanctions on military leaders and an arms embargo.
http://www.dhakatribune.com/world/2017/09/24/hrw-myanmar-landmines-deadly-fleeing-rohingya/