Rohingya Ethnic Cleansing - Updates & Discussions

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Army in systematic bid to drive Rohingya from Myanmar: UN
SAM Staff, October 12, 2017

Rohingya refugees, who arrived from Myanmar, walk in a rice field after crossing the border in Palang Khali near Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh Oct 9, 2017. (Photo: Reuters/Jorge Silva)

Myanmar’s “systematic” crackdown on the Rohingya has been designed to permanently eliminate the minority Muslim community from their home in Rakhine state, the United Nations said Wednesday (Oct 11).

“Brutal attacks against Rohingya in northern Rakhine State have been well-organised, coordinated and systematic, with the intent of not only driving the population out of Myanmar but preventing them from returning to their homes,” a UN investigation found.

The probe is based on interviews with people who fled to neighbouring Bangladesh since attacks by militants on Myanmar’s security forces in Rakhine on Aug 25, which sparked a major military backlash.

More than half a million people have fled in the latest exodus, according to the UN.

The UN probe found that the latest wave of military “clearance operations” in Rakhine in fact began before August 25, possibly in early August, contradicting claims by Myanmar that the crackdown was a response to militant strikes.

The investigation broadly outlines an army-led campaign to erase the Rohingya’s connection to their homeland in the majority Buddhist nation, where they have suffered persecution for decades.

“In some cases, before and during the attacks, megaphones were used to announce: ‘You do not belong here – go to Bangladesh. If you do not leave, we will torch your houses and kill you’,” the UN said.

Teachers as well as cultural, religious and community leaders have also been targeted in the latest crackdown “in an effort to diminish Rohingya history, culture and knowledge”, the report said.

“Efforts were taken to effectively erase signs of memorable landmarks in the geography of the Rohingya landscape and memory in such a way that a return to their lands would yield nothing but a desolate and unrecognisable terrain,” it added.
Also Read: Rohingya crisis reveals reality of India’s relations with Bangladesh
The findings were based on interviews with Rohingya who arrived in Bangladesh between September 14 and 24.

The UN team said it spoke to hundreds of people in 65 interviews, some with individuals and some with groups as large as 40.

UN human rights chief ZeidRa’ad Al Hussein, has previously described the crackdown as “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”
SOURCE AFP/ GENEVA
http://southasianmonitor.com/2017/10/12/army-systematic-bid-drive-rohingya-myanmar-un/

 

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WHAT’S TATMADAW’S PLAN FOR ROHINGYA
Myanmar’s military spent decades engineering a genocide
Austin Bodetti
The Diplomat
Despite taking years to plan, history’s worst crimes against humanity appeared to the world as clumsy, hasty, and reactive. The Ottoman Empire organized the Armenian Genocide amid fears of Russian spies during World War I. Nazi Germany raced to implement the Final Solution, the bloodiest phase of the Holocaust, as the Soviet Union and the Western Allies punched through its defenses during World War II.

Newcomers to genocide studies might see historic recurrence in Myanmar, whose military, the Tatmadaw, claims that it only started battling the Rohingya, a Muslim minority, after insurgents fighting under the banner of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) conducted operations against security forces in October 2016 and August 2017.
However, the Tatmadaw has spent decades engineering the genocide of the Rohingya, a conspiracy that is now coming to fruition and that, in the face of the Western world’s growing complacence and Islamophobia, will likely succeed.
Brutality with patience
When the British Empire granted independence to Burma, Myanmar’s predecessor, in 1948, some Rohingya pushed for their own Islamic state separate from the Buddhist-dominated sovereign state in which they found themselves.
They referred to the territory that would become Rakhine State — named after the Rakhine, the Buddhist people who live there alongside the Rohingya — as “Arakan.” The Tatmadaw had other plans though, expelling thousands of those secessionists to Bangladesh.

Unlike the Ottomans or the Nazis, who tried to crush minority religions in just a few years, the Tatmadaw exercised not only brutality but also patience and restraint. In the early 1990s, soon after the military government had renamed the country “Myanmar” to promote its nationalist agenda, 250,000 Rohingya fled rape, religious persecution, and slavery to Bangladesh.

The Tatmadaw nevertheless allowed many to return, likely appreciating how cruel the instantaneous erasure of a minority could look to the international community. The Tatmadaw understood what the Hutus and Serbs failed to.
Most often, Rohingya refugees would return from Bangladesh after the Tatmadaw decided that it had wrought enough destruction, adding to a growing Rohingya population.
The Rakhine feared that the Rohingya might soon outnumber them, so Burma’s then-military government legislated a solution: the 1982 Citizenship Law, which required Burmese to prove their ancestry prior to 1823, when Britain colonized Burma and permitted Muslims from the British Raj to immigrate there.

The Tatmadaw thus rendered the Rohingya stateless, classifying them as illegal “Bengali” immigrants.
The War on Terror presented Myanmar the opportunity to build its anti-Rohingya narrative: the Tatmadaw was fighting Islamist terrorism, not pursuing an Islamophobic genocide.

When sectarian riots erupted in Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine State, in summer 2012, the Tatmadaw imprisoned tens of thousands of Rohingya in concentration camps for what it described as their own safety. According to the Myanmar government, the camps protected the Rohingya from Rakhine rioters while the Tatmadaw pursued the alleged terrorists of the Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO), a defunct resistance movement.
Passive to active genocide
Choosing to confine the Rohingya, instead of killing them, allowed the Tatmadaw to define the story. Even if Human Rights Watch and the United Nations protested, what happened in 2012 proved ambiguous enough that most observers refrained from labeling the detentions genocide. The Tatmadaw was pressuring the Rohingya to leave through oppression rather than making them leave through violence.

In 2016 and 2017, the Tatmadaw has found the opportunity to finish what it started in 1948. The existence of ARSA, the Rohingya reaction to decades of passive genocide, gave the Tatmadaw the excuse to switch to active genocide.

It combated the insurgents, whom it described as “terrorists” even though they killed no civilians, by arresting, burning, displacing, executing, raping, and torturing Rohingya civilians. These war crimes fell under the labels of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism so popular with Western militaries. The Tatmadaw reproduced what it saw at work in the Western world.

Nothing from 1948 to now suggests that the Tatmadaw is reviving the War on Terror with sincerity. Instead, the military that governs Myanmar to this day while hiding behind Aung San Suu Kyi, as a figurehead, has likewise used the War on Terror as cover for the War against Islam. The last two historical attempts at genocide against Muslims, in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s, had to contend with American humanitarian intervention. Today, however, Americans sound reluctant to intervene (more) even in Afghanistan and Iraq, the countries that they proved so eager to invade in the early 2000s.

The Tatmadaw has gone further than its counterparts in the Philippines and Thailand, the other two countries in Southeast Asia confronting Islamist insurgencies. The Filipinos and the Thais, on the one hand, have at least spoken of conflict resolution and peace building. The Tatmadaw, on the other, refuses to negotiate with ARSA, a revolutionary movement far worse armed and organized than the Malays in Patani and the Moros in Mindanao. The Tatmadaw wants to destroy an ethnicity, not end an insurgency. ARSA and the RSO, resistance movements capable of little real resistance, seem the perfect excuse.
UN troops only answer
“The only resolution to the Rohingya crisis is to send UN troops to Arakan and create a safe space for our people,” Sham Shu Anwar, one of the few Rohingya to stay in Myanmar after half a million have escaped, told The Diplomat. “All other efforts to rescue our people will be in vain.” He recounted the Tatmadaw’s attempts at ethnic cleansing as “adamant and inhuman.”

The Rohingya once hoped that Myanmar’s democratization would return to them the rights that the Tatmadaw had stolen. They praised the National League for Democracy (NLD), Suu Kyi’s political party, for its potential to bring peace to Myanmar. Now, neither the NLD nor the international community have met the Rohingya’s already-wavering expectations of protection and salvation. “The international community just provides us food,” Anwar observed. “We need protection, not food.”

One of the world’s most persecuted minorities has convinced itself of the need for warfare, whether in the form of humanitarian intervention or rebellion. “There are two ways to save the Rohingya: one is intervention by the UN Security Council and the other is arming Rohingya fighters,” Anwar argued, noting that his compatriots saw few options against the Tatmadaw.
“Every moment, we are scared of the Burmese. Everyone here is scared of them. Yesterday, they set fire to a village near us.”

ARSA might have miscalculated in attacking the Tatmadaw, which can now claim to be acting in self-defense.
The longer ARSA resists, the longer soldiers can slaughter the Rohingya who remain in Myanmar. Anwar told The Diplomat that he nevertheless refuses to leave Myanmar, his homeland, for Bangladesh: “We worry about living in refugee camps. If the Burmese kill us, we will die here.”

Austin Bodetti is a freelance journalist focusing on conflict in the Muslim world. His writing has appeared in AskMen, The Daily Beast, The Daily Dot, Vox, and Wired UK.
http://www.weeklyholiday.net/Homepage/Pages/UserHome.aspx

 

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12:00 AM, October 13, 2017 / LAST MODIFIED: 05:23 AM, October 13, 2017
Top UN official in Myanmar recalled
Suu Kyi says her govt in talks with Dhaka for return of those 'now in Bangladesh'; no mention of Rohingya

Renata Lok-Dessallien
Star Report
The UN has announced that its top official in Myanmar is being recalled to headquarters in New York amid allegations that she commissioned and then suppressed a report that was highly critical of UN's approach in Myanmar.

The development comes as UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman begins a five-day visit to Myanmar today.

Separately, the UN Security Council meets to hear from former UN chief Kofi Annan his experience on the plight of Rohingya today.

More than 5,20,000 Rohingya people have crossed into Bangladesh over the last one and a half months, fleeing a security crackdown that allegedly killed 3,000 Rohingyas and burned 284 villages of the Muslim minority.

Myanmar says its "clearance operations" began on August 25 in response to Rohingya insurgent attacks on security posts, but the UN says it started in early August.

A UN report on Wednesday said, “The brutal attacks against the Rohingyas in northern Rakhine state have been well-organised, coordinated and systematic, with the intent of not only driving the population out of Myanmar but preventing them from returning to their homes.”

Meanwhile, Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi yesterday called for national unity and said she created a committee that would coordinate all international and local assistance in Rakhine State, reports AP.

A child cries as its mother fell asleep while waiting for relief at Balukhali in Cox's Bazar's Ukhia yesterday. Photo: Amran Hossain
She acknowledged in a speech on state-run television that the country was facing widespread criticism over the refugee crisis, and called for unity in tackling the problem.

She said her government was holding talks with Bangladesh on the return of “those who are now in Bangladesh.”

Suu Kyi did not use the word “Rohingya” in her speech, although she referred to several other ethnic minorities by name.

She said those who return from Bangladesh would need to be resettled, without providing details, and said development must be brought to Rakhine to achieve a durable peace.

The Myanmar state counsellor said she would head the new committee, the "Union Enterprise for Humanitarian Assistance, Resettlement and Development in Rakhine," and that it would coordinate all efforts to create a "peaceful and developed Rakhine state."

Suu Kyi said the government has invited UN agencies, financial institutions such as the World Bank, and others to help develop Rakhine, one of Myanmar's poorest areas.
CONTROVERSY OVER RENATA
Quoting the UN, the BBC yesterday reported UN Resident Coordinator Renata Lok-Dessallien in Myanmar would leave by the end of October.

It said in June that she would be rotated from her position but stressed then the decision had nothing to do with her performance.

Diplomatic and aid community sources in Yangon, however, told the BBC's Jonah Fisher the decision was linked to her failure to prioritise human rights. Since then Dessallien has remained in post with the government of Myanmar, rejecting her proposed successor.

Two weeks ago the UN secretary-general said he had full confidence in Dessallien but the BBC said that now appears to be in doubt.

Renata was the focus of a BBC investigation last month in which she was accused of suppressing internal discussion on Rohingya Muslims. A statement from the UN in Myanmar, in response to a BBC inquiry, however, defended Dessallien's handling of the Rohingya issue.

The Guardian newspaper on October 5 reported the UN-commissioned report that criticised its strategy in Myanmar and warned it was ill-prepared to deal with the impending Rohingya crisis was suppressed.

The review, written by a consultant and submitted in May, offered a highly critical analysis of the UN's approach and said there should be “no silence on human rights”.

The report accurately predicted a “serious deterioration” in the six months following its submission and urged the UN to undertake “serious contingency planning”.

“It is recommended that, as a matter of urgency, UN headquarters identifies ways to improve overall coherence in the UN's system approach,” wrote Richard Horsey, the report's author.

Security forces would be “heavy-handed and indiscriminate” in dealing with the Rohingya, said Horsey in the report.

However, a source close to events, who asked not to be named, told the Guardian that the report was “spiked” and not circulated among UN and aid agencies “because Renata didn't like the analysis”.
UN UNDER-SECRETARY-GENERAL TO VISIT MYANMAR
UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman, who is visiting Myanmar during October 13-17 October, will focus on building a constructive partnership between Myanmar and the UN to tackle the underlying issues impacting all communities in the affected areas of Rakhine, said a UN statement yesterday.

The visit follows UN's repeated calls for an end to the military operations and violence in Rakhine and unfettered access for humanitarian support and the safe, voluntary, dignified and sustainable return of refugees to their areas of origin.

UN Security Council, which met late September but failed to adopt a resolution against Myanmar because of opposition from China and Russia, will hear former UN chief Kofi Annan.

Annan in late August presented the final report of an advisory commission on Rakhine that he chaired at the request of Aung San Suu Kyi, reports AFP.

France and Britain requested the meeting with Annan as the council weighs its next steps to confront the refugee crisis.

Britain has been working on a draft Security Council resolution that would call for the return of the Rohingyas, but negotiations with China, a supporter of Myanmar's former ruling junta, have been slow, diplomats said.
WORLD BANK READY TO SUPPORT
World Bank said it is ready to support Bangladesh addressing the Rohingya crisis in Bangladesh.

“While we hope the refugees can safely return home soon, it is important that the international community support them and the host communities in the near term with basic services,” said Annette Dixon, vice president at the World Bank for the South Asia Region in a statement after a meeting with Finance Minister AMA Muhith in Washington.

The amount of the support has yet to be decided, but it could include expanding access to health, education, water, sanitation, and roads.

After the meeting on the sidelines of World Bank-IMF annual conference, Muhith told reporters that Bangladesh would seek assistance formally from the World Bank for about 10 lakh forcibly displaced Rohingyas.

He did not talk of any amount, but said half of the amount was likely to be grant. Muhith also said Bangladesh needed about $2 billion for the Rohingya refugees.
HOME MINISTER TO FOCUS ON REPATRIATION
Bangladesh Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal will go to Myanmar on a four-day visit on October 23 to discuss the repatriation of the Rohingyas, reports UNB.

The Bangladesh delegation will include two secretaries of the home ministry, high officials of Border Guard Bangladesh, Coast Guard, Department of Narcotics Control, the police boss and foreign ministry officials.

"The objective of the visit is to repatriate the Rohingyas who were forced to flee into Bangladesh," the minister told reporters at the secretariat yesterday.
http://www.thedailystar.net/frontpa...isis-top-un-official-myanmar-recalled-1475680

 

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12:00 AM, October 13, 2017 / LAST MODIFIED: 02:52 AM, October 13, 2017
ENCOUNTERING THE REAL AND THE IMAGINED
The nation and the citizen

Photo: Danish Siddiqui/Reuters
Amena Mohsin
As I remain glued, like many of us, to the news of the Rohingyas fleeing to Bangladesh for survival, my mind goes back to my days in the camps of Pakistan, where I had spent three years of my life along with my family, and many of the Bengali army personnel and their families.

These were the Bengali military personnel who, in 1971, after the liberation of Bangladesh, had opted to come back to Bangladesh, a land which was, and is, their own. The fenced life in the camp was both “real” and “imagined”.

It was real because the constant surveillance of the Pakistani soldiers along the fenced wire—which had electricity passing through it round the clock lest any of the interns or prisoners flee—reminded the interns of the presence of the state and its power to kill or keep one fenced; the intern was the “other”, not a citizen of that state. But within the fenced community, there was also life.

We listened to Bangladesh Betar most intently. My very first emotional encounter with my Bangladesh, a land I had created in my imagination within those fences, was through patriotic Bangla songs as they flowed through the programmes of Bangladesh Betar.
We celebrated Nazrul and Rabindra jayanti with songs and dramas. It was our encounter with the state of Pakistan where we sang Bangla songs and performed dramas despite their guns and barbed wire.
It was also the building of a realm where we survived through our dreams and imaginations of returning to our land one day. It was indeed a land of freedom for me. I wonder if a Rohingya teenager imagines a land for herself or himself, a land of freedom, with no soldiers marking her or him the “other”.

"The big challenge for us, as the Rohingya question unfolds and also as we face the challenges of rightlessness in our everyday lives, is: how do we translate the imagined into a reality, and whose dream and reality it is going to be?

The ideas of nation and citizenship thus got engraved in my mind through those days in the camp.
Very early I, along with my generation, saw the “power” of the state, the “power” and “privileges” of citizenship, and also, to some extent, the plight of statelessness through refugeehood or being imprisoned in camps.

The power that is embedded in these categories, I would suggest, we need to encounter as humans, not as nations or citizens. In independent Bangladesh, it was Manabendra Narayan Larma, the sole representative from the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) in the national parliament, who exposed the hegemony and limits of nation and nationalism. He protested the imposition of Bengali nationalism and Bengali citizenship upon the entire population of Bangladesh through its first constitution in 1972. Larma made it explicit that he was a Chakma, not a Bengali, so his nationality could not be Bengali, but indeed he was a Bangladeshi citizen.

The shift later into Bangladeshi nationalism, with its incorporation of religion as its tool, did not reflect the dream of the minority communities either. With Bangladeshi nationalism, the state took a turn towards majoritarian religion, i.e. Islam; in Bengali nationalism, the majoritarian Bengali culture was embedded. These state-sponsored models of nationalism created cultural, linguistic, ethnic and then religious minorities. One needs serious pondering here. Within these frames, where and how do the non-Bengalis and non-Muslims locate themselves as part of the nation and citizenry?

There are cycles of "otherness" and "exclusions" in the basic premises of state formation.
The question of women also looms large within these discourses and frames.
Women are considered to be the emblem of cultural and biological continuity and authenticity of a nation.
The “purity” of the nation is important for nation and state construction, which, in most post-colonial states, have become interchangeable.
It is no surprise, then, that rape has been and continues to be used as a strategy during war-time, ethnic-cleansing and genocide.
It took Bangladesh more than four decades to recognise birangona or war heroines as freedom fighters. This indeed is the outcome of the women's movement and the trial of the war criminals of 1971. The demand had been a part of the women's movement; in other words, it was a movement which confronted the state and the nation to create space within their frames that would interrogate the notions of shame, honour, and purity. This emblem of the nation, i.e. the woman, however, does not enjoy the same rights as her male counterpart.

Through the insertion of personal laws, the state has constitutionally limited her rights. As the women's movement carries on its struggle for the rape survivors of 1971, it is questionable if a minority woman feels part of the same movement. Kalpana Chakma's abduction allegedly by a military officer in 1996 from the CHT remains unresolved. But then there have been many other instances of sexual violations and rapes in the CHT, where silence or silencing has become the rule of the game. Here again one needs serious introspection into the minority within the minority and the supposed wholeness of the nation and the premise of equality of citizens.

The fenced life in the camp is both "real" and "imagined". Photo: Amirul Rajiv
The state also arrogates to itself the right of disenfranchising its citizens. The Rohingya community in Myanmar is a case in point here.
It is an ongoing process since 1962, to the point that Myanmar today labels them as Bengali Muslims. The creation of this “otherness” and the genocide taking place in Myanmar is part of the nation- and state-crafting project of the Burman nation, where the hegemony of Buddhist fundamentalism is increasingly coming to the foreground.
It is also about the control of resources.
In Sri Lanka, we also observed the disenfranchisement of the Tamils through citizenship laws and the supremacy of Sinhala nationalism.
Tracking the path of nation and state formation in postcolonial societies, one observes cycles of repression in the name of nation and nationalism, while the biases and hierarchies of citizenship remain quite uncontested.

It is assumed citizenship gives one full entry and equal privileges, which indeed is not the case. There are cycles of “otherness” and “exclusions” in the basic premises of state formation.
The big challenge for us, as the Rohingya question unfolds and also as we face the challenges of rightlessness in our everyday lives, is: how do we translate the imagined into a reality, and whose dream and reality it is going to be? Indeed, in the backdrop of the challenges, hopes, aspirations and, above all, humaneness, there has to be multiplicity of dreams, imaginations, and realities, within a state.
There is no escape from this reality and imagination.
Amena Mohsin is Professor of Department of International Relations, University of Dhaka.
http://www.thedailystar.net/star-weekend/the-shadow-violence/the-nation-and-the-citizen-1474909

 

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2:00 AM, October 13, 2017 / LAST MODIFIED: 12:21 AM, October 13, 2017
The tale of a persecuted people
Shaer Reaz
Their mass exodus into Bangladesh and attempted entry into Thailand, Malaysia and other nations to escape a brutal ethnic cleansing at the hands of the Myanmar military junta has been termed the "the world's fastest growing refugee crisis."

They have been termed the "most persecuted minority in history" by the United Nations. Their history is one filled with sectarian violence and a struggle with identity that is unique in the modern worlds. This is the story of a systematically oppressed people—the Rohingya.
Click below to see the full timeline:
In the shadow of violence

 

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Do the right thing
Zahin Hasan
Published at 06:14 PM October 09, 2017
Last updated at 11:58 PM October 09, 2017

They should be made more employable SYED ZAKIR HOSSAIN
The only thing to do in good conscience is to make the Rohingya feel welcome here
Just over one month ago, Myanmar began an intensive campaign to slaughter and expel the Rohingya. Since then, Bangladesh has received over half a million Rohingya refugees.

Our government has asked the international community to pressure Myanmar to take back the refugees, and to create safe zones for them in Myanmar.
Unfortunately, Myanmar enjoys the protection of China; China is likely to use its veto to block any UN resolution aimed at creating safe zones.

Even if safe zones can be created, it is far from certain that the Rohingya refugees will be willing to return to Myanmar. They watched as their young men were lined up and shot; they watched as their teenage girls were gang raped, then shot.

The Rohingya are not going to trust any promises made by Myanmar; many of them returned to Myanmar after being driven out in the 1990’s, only to be driven out again.

It should be pointed out that during the Bosnian war, the “safe areas” created by the UN around towns like Srebrenica were attacked by Serb forces; 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were massacred in the Srebrenica “safe area.”

UN resolutions created safe areas, but UN member states were not willing to deploy their armed forces in numbers sufficient to protect those areas. The international community is not likely to repeat the mistake of creating imaginary “safe areas;” the only safe area is a state which is protected by its own army.

Insurgents like ARSA will not be able to liberate Arakan from Myanmar. Bangladesh won independence in just nine months because we are disconnected from Pakistan; Pakistan could not easily reinforce or supply its troops in Bangladesh.

Arakan is connected to Myanmar, making it easy for Myanmar to overwhelm ARSA with tanks and warplanes. ARSA will not win a free Arakan; the Rohingya will only be willing to return if Myanmar grants them full citizenship. Myanmar stripped the Rohingya of their citizenship, and Myanmar must be forced to restore it.

Under pressure, Myanmar has recently said it will allow refugees to return after it verifies that they were once residents; however, it has not offered to restore their citizenship.
Myanmar is not negotiating in good faith; it knows that as long as it does not extend citizenship to the Rohingya, they can be driven out again.

Unless safe zones can be created and protected, it is not likely that the Rohingya refugees will be willing to return

The only possible solution lies in tough diplomacy. Bangladesh should impose a trade embargo on Myanmar, and should announce that this embargo will only be lifted if Myanmar repatriates the Rohingya and restores their citizenship. Bangladesh should also try to convince sympathetic countries (including the US, EU, Japan, and powerful Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Malaysia) to impose trade sanctions on Myanmar until it agrees to allow Rohingya refugees to return as citizens.

Trade sanctions were instrumental in ending apartheid in South Africa; they offer the best hope of ending apartheid against the Rohingya in Myanmar.

Even if we are able to convince like-minded countries to impose trade sanctions on Myanmar, it will probably take a decade (or two) to persuade Myanmar to abandon apartheid; until then, the Rohingya refugees will not be able to return to their homes as citizens. In the meantime, we should do what is right; we should welcome these unfortunate people, who have nowhere else to go.

We should firstly register all the Rohingya refugees, and ask richer countries in Europe and North America to host as many as they can; it’s not fair to expect Bangladesh to host all of them. We should ask the international community to provide food, education and health services to the refugees who are minors.

We should give the adult refugees the right to live and work anywhere in Bangladesh so that they can support themselves. We should ask the international community for funds to train them to make them more employable. Rohingya children born in Bangladesh should be allowed to become citizens of Bangladesh.

Equally important is what we should not do. We should not prevent them from buying sim cards; they need cellphones to contact their surviving family members. We should not confine them to a camps on a remote island where it will be impossible for them to find employment and integrate with our society.

A generation ago, India hosted millions of Bangladeshi refugees who had fled the violence of the Pakistani army; the refugees returned after Bangladesh won independence.

The Rohingya have fled Arakan, but there is no chance that the ARSA insurgents will be able to win a free Arakan state; they have no home to which they can return. The only thing we can do in good conscience is to make them feel welcome in our country.
Kazi Zahin Hasan is a businessman, and a member of the board of directors of the Dhaka Tribune.
http://www.dhakatribune.com/opinion/op-ed/2017/10/09/do-the-right-thing/

Speech of the Century : Justice For Rohingya by Soborno Isaac

12:00 AM, October 13, 2017 / LAST MODIFIED: 01:34 AM, October 13, 2017
When religion is used by the military to justify their aims

Photo: AFP
Saskia Sassen
Religious persecution is the overwhelming fact in the violence that the Rohingya have experienced on and off in Myanmar across the centuries.

But this does not preclude that the military, long in charge of what they call “economic development”, can today push those persecutions to a whole new level. And this is what they did in the current phase of a long history of Rohingya persecution.

By burning Rohingya villages to the ground and eliminating all traces of those villages, the military contributed to transform persecution into radical expulsions of whole villages. And, as one Myanmar minister put it: "According to the law, burnt land becomes government-managed land" (Minister for Social Development, Relief and Resettlement Win Myat Aye, at a meeting in the Rakhine state capital of Sittwe as reported by the Global New Light of Myanmar).

In my reading, this also contributes to explain the extraordinary (literally) effort the military deployed to eliminate traces of Rohingya villages and reduce it all to “burnt land.” No returning Rohingya can easily make a claim that it was their land: now it is just burnt land.

And indeed, the national government announced a few days ago that it was taking over the “development of the Rakhine state”, and specifically the burnt land in Rohingya land. That seals the deal.
But there is more to the current situation.
China's projects in rakhine state
There is a parallel history developing in the Rakhine state that has not been mentioned—except most recently. It is the fact that China has entered contractual agreements with the government of Myanmar to develop a massive port in the Rakhine state and a large industrial zone. These are not in the area where the current burning of villages happened. But clearly such massive developments will have an enormous shadow effect over a very large part of Rakhine, going well beyond the area of the port and the industrial zone.

China's Beijing based CITIC investment group will be building a deep-sea port and economic zone in Kyaukpyu worth USD 7.3 billion. A three billion dollar economic development zone is also in the works.

"The escalating displacement of millions of smallholders (mostly Buddhists) from the land was a major change as to who was to manage the land. Smallholders became refugees of a new economic ordering. Myanmar is not unique in this.

China has already invested significantly in the Rakhine state with a USD 2.45 billion pipeline from Rakhine to China's Yunnan province. The planned port will give China access to the Indian Ocean and to the Middle East—and to Middle Eastern crude oil. Most of China's investments in Myanmar have been outside the Rakhine state—thus the current investments are new. China had invested USD 15 billion mostly in mining, dams, and timber in other parts of Myanmar—in fact, one third of the vast forest in Myanmar is now barren land due to the timber extraction.

A question I have been pursuing is how this might impact the Rakhine state area where the Rohingya villages were burnt down. I have a hard time not thinking that religion was used by the military to make burnt land and thereby take possession.
What does religion have to do with it?
It is worth noting that the international media has almost exclusively focused on the religion aspect. Human Rights Watch described the anti-Rohingya violence as amounting to [crimes against humanity] carried out as part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Malaysia's foreign minister described the Myanmar government's actions as ethnic cleansing and called on them to stop the practice, leading in turn to a strong response from Myanmar's government. John McKissick, head of the UN refugee agency, said the Myanmar government was carrying out ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people.

All of this is true, and a horrible part of the story.

But my research leads me to argue that religion and ethnicity might be only part of what explains this forced displacement, larger than many earlier expulsions of the Rohingya. The past two decades have seen a massive worldwide rise of corporate acquisitions of land for mining, timber, agriculture, and water.

In the case of Myanmar, the military have been grabbing vast stretches of land from small holders since the 1990s—without compensation, but with threats if they should fight back. This land grabbing has continued across the decades. At the time of the 2012 attacks, the land allocated to large projects had increased by 170 percent between 2010 and 2013. By 2012 the law governing land was changed to favour large corporate acquisitions.

The escalating displacement of millions of smallholders (mostly Buddhists) from the land was a major change as to who was to manage the land. Smallholders became refugees of a new economic ordering. Myanmar is not unique in this. Similar brutal expulsions of smallholders have been happening across the world as large corporations take over because they “establish” that the smallholders have no contracts showing the land is theirs, no matter how long they and their ancestors worked that land. What is different in Myanmar is the almost absolute control the military have long had over much of the country's land, and hence their key role in the expulsion of smallholders (pdf).

Burmese small holders protesting land grabbing. Photo: AFP
Today there are whole new economies—mining, timber, geothermal projects—where before there were smallholders. Economic development may require this: but it should also work for the millions of displaced and never compensated smallholders. Foreign direct investment is now concentrated in extractive sectors and power generation. Not much of the new investment has gone to sectors such as manufacturing that can generate a strong working class and a modest middle class. For example, Myanmar's Yadana pipeline project, “required investment of over $1bn (£0.8bn), yet employs only 800 workers”.

Furthermore, the 2012 law empowered foreign investors. It offered government loans—but no help for the smallholders who lost their land. Land properties can range from 2,000 hectares up to 20,000 hectares (5,000 acres to 50,000 acres) for an initial period of 30 years. The extent of land grabs is such that Myanmar is losing more than a million acres of forest a year (pdf).

These facts are never invoked in the discussion about the persecution of the Rohingyas. And Aung San Suu Kyi has been similarly silent on the matter.

(Generally. see my earlier piece in the Guardian on these developments: “Is Rohingya persecution caused by business interests rather than religion?” published on January 4, 2017).

In short, expelling Rohingyas from their land might well be good for future business. Indeed, quite recently the government allocated millions of hectares in Rakhine for corporate development. To some extent the international focus on the religion of the Rohingya has overshadowed the vast land grabs that have affected millions, including the Rohingya.
Saskia Sassen is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University.
Her latest book is Expulsions: Complexity and Brutality in the Global Economy(Harvard University Press).
www.saskiasassen.com
http://www.thedailystar.net/star-we...-used-the-military-justify-their-aims-1475209

 

[Banglar Bir]

Hands Tied by Old Hope, Diplomats in Myanmar Stay Silent
www.thestateless.com/2017/10/hands-tied-by-old-hope-diplomats-in-myanmar-stay-silent.html

Rohingya in a camp in Sittwe, Rakhine, this month. The Myanmar government has prevented international aid agencies from delivering relief supplies or even assessing need in the area. ADAM DEAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Hannah Beech, The New York Times

YANGON, Myanmar — It is unfolding again: Troops have unleashed fire and rape and indiscriminate slaughter on a vulnerable minority, driving hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee and creating a humanitarian emergency that crosses borders.

A crisis in Myanmar that many saw coming has brought a host of uncomfortable questions along with it: Why did the world — which promised “never again” after Rwanda and Bosnia, then Sudan and Syria — seemingly do so little to forestall an ethnic cleansing campaign by Myanmar’s military? And what can be done now to address the urgent humanitarian calamity caused when more than half of Myanmar’s ethnic Rohingya Muslims fled the country over just a few weeks?

Outside Myanmar, criticism of its military has mounted. The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, has urged “unfettered access” for international agencies and called the Rohingya crisis “the world’s fastest-developing refugee emergency and a humanitarian and human rights nightmare.”

President Emmanuel Macron of France has called it genocide. And there is talk, although still tentative, of the European Union’s renewing targeted sanctions on people culpable in the violence that has driven the Rohingya from Rakhine, a state in western Myanmar.

But in Yangon, Myanmar’s commercial capital, where the diplomatic corps is based, there is still reluctance to call to task publicly either the military or the civilian administration led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Some diplomats say they are trying to preserve whatever influence they may have left, in order to avert an even worse catastrophe.

More than half a million Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh since late August, when a Rohingya militant attack on Myanmar security posts catalyzed a brutal counteroffensive. Hundreds of thousands more remaining in Myanmar may still be trying to cross the border. Those who cannot flee are trapped and hungry in northern Rakhine, according to anecdotal evidence collected by international aid agencies, which the government has largely prevented from delivering relief supplies or even assessing need in the region.

Aung San Suu Kyi supporters at an ‘Interreligious Gathering of Prayers for Peace’ organized by her party in Yangon on Tuesday.
ADAM DEAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
“There are few places on Earth where we are denied access to this extent,” said Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council. “We have an office in northern Rakhine, we have staff there, we have supplies there, we could go tomorrow with our trucks — but we are being stopped. This is illegal, this is intolerable.”

I spoke to half a dozen ambassadors and senior aid agency staff members in Yangon about what the problem was. All asked to speak off the record.

There are many reasons for their reticence, but a major one is this: Myanmar has been presented as a success story, despite a host of economic and ethnic problems.

Elections in 2015 elevated Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate whose name was once a byword for acts of conscience, and seemed to usher in a chance for democracy to take hold.

But whatever authority she has, as the nation’s state counselor, is dwarfed by that of a military that ruled for nearly half a century and continues to monopolize power.

Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi is not the one ordering Rohingya villages to be burned down or civilians to be massacred. That firepower lies with the Tatmadaw, Myanmar’s military, led by Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing.

In a Facebook post on Thursday recounting his meeting with the United States ambassador, Scot Marciel, the military chief called reports of a large exodus of Rohingya to Bangladesh an “exaggeration.” He reiterated that Rohingya were “not the natives” of Myanmar.

Monks praying in Bengala Monastery in Yangon, this month. Over the past year or so, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi has played to hatred of Rohingya Muslims among Myanmar’s Buddhist majority.
ADAM DEAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Diplomats say Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi used to express sympathy for the Rohingya in private, explaining that she could not speak out because of widespread hatred for them among the Buddhist majority. But over the past year or so, she has played to that prejudice, referring instead to the Rohingya as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

In a televised address on Thursday, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi pushed back against international criticism and promised to personally oversee efforts to bring peace to Rakhine and repatriate those who have fled to Bangladesh.

In the speech, as in an address delivered to foreign envoys last month, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi declined to tackle accusations that the military has unleashed arson, murder and rape on the Rohingya.

Despite Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s obfuscations, diplomats in Yangon have tended to avoid increasing public pressure. Veteran observers of Myanmar’s military, which has long faced condemnation for its brutality toward civilians and ethnic minorities, have warned that an international shaming of a disgraced Nobel laureate is just what the generals want.

“She gets all the criticism, and then the Tatmadaw gets to quietly do what it wants and what it has done for decades, which is to burn villages and terrorize ethnic areas,” said David Scott Mathieson, a longtime human-rights researcher in Myanmar.

Foreign envoys here are mindful of the complex politics. A nation does not emerge from 50 years of military dictatorship without political wounds, they say, asserting that pushing Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, whose famous resolve can tend toward obduracy, could be counterproductive.

One senior Western envoy said that with no real coordination between military and civilian officials, weeks of flying back and forth to talk with them had come to nothing. The diplomat called it “by far the most frustrating issue I’ve ever worked on.”

Rohingya refugees outside Cox’s Bazar, in Bangladesh, last month. More than half a million Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh since late August, and hundreds of thousands more still in Myanmar may still be trying to cross the border.
SERGEY PONOMAREV FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Mr. Egeland, who once served as the United Nations’ under secretary general for humanitarian affairs, has grown impatient.

“I would like to issue a terse message to the diplomats,” he said. “I would like to disagree that it is a complicated situation. It is very simple: When humanitarians are not allowed to help civilians, people die.”

For its part, the United Nations in Myanmar commissioned an internal report, submitted in April, that warned against soft-pedaling on human rights to placate the military or the civilian authority.

“Trade-offs between advocacy and access,” the report said, “have in practice deprioritized human rights and humanitarian action, which are seen as complicating and undermining relations with government.”

The report’s author, Richard Horsey, noted how quickly the honeymoon period after the 2015 elections had subsided.

“We shouldn’t be surprised that the landing spot for Myanmar’s transition may be as one more Southeast Asian nation with authoritarian tendencies, rising nationalism and ethnic tensions,” he said. “But Myanmar should aspire to be so much better than that.”

Certainly, few countries enjoyed as much international good will as Myanmar did, at a time when the world was desperate for a positive narrative.

A burned house in Gawdu Zara village, in Rakhine state, last month. International aid workers with years of experience in Rakhine say that they have never seen the situation so grave.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
“Western donors and the U.N. have not always been helpful,” said Charles Petrie, a former United Nations resident coordinator in Myanmar, noting “the refusal for a long time to let go of the fairy-tale view of Myanmar with Aung San Suu Kyi coming to power and the corresponding refusal to push back on some of her dogmatic positions.”

Mr. Petrie drew comparisons with South Sudan, where the world was “so taken by the narrative of a new country emerging from northern enslavement that the signs of the emerging violence were ignored.”

International aid workers with years of experience in Rakhine say they have never seen the situation so grave.

Brad Hazlett of Partners Relief and Development, a Christian charity that has provided food aid to the Rohingya, said he had been prevented from visiting internment camps this month in the state capital, Sittwe, that he had visited dozens of times before.

“I think their strategy is to starve them out,” he said.

Abul Hashim, a Rohingya from the northern Rakhine village of Anauk Pyin, described by cellphone how a team of ambassadors and United Nations officials had gone to the community on Oct. 2 as part of a stage-managed government trip. The crowds of officials who had helicoptered in promised food aid to the village.

But for nearly 10 days, Mr. Hashim said, his community had received nothing. For three months, none of the Rohingya have been allowed to step outside the village, he said. They have had no access to doctors or schools. Until some aid arrived on Wednesday evening, all he, his wife, their three daughters and three sons had eaten that day was less than a pound of rice and some water.
“Our sorrows,” he said, “know no bounds.”

 

[Banglar Bir]

Myanmar army opens probe amid reports of killings, abuse of Rohingya Muslims
Reuters
Published: 2017-10-13 18:53:37.0 BdST Updated: 2017-10-13 18:53:37.0 BdST

Myanmar's military has launched an internal probe into the conduct of soldiers during a counteroffensive that has sent more than half a million Rohingya Muslims fleeing to Bangladesh, many saying they witnessed killings, rape and arson by troops.
Coordinated Rohingya insurgent attacks on 30 security posts on Aug 25 sparked a ferocious military response in the Muslim-majority northern part of Rakhine state that the United Nations has said was ethnic cleansing.

A committee led by military Lieutenant-General Aye Win has begun an investigation into the behaviour of military personnel, the office of the commander in chief said on Friday, insisting the operation was justified under Buddhist-majority Myanmar's constitution.

According to a statement posted on Senior General Min Aung Hlaing's Facebook page, the panel will ask, "Did they follow the military code of conduct? Did they exactly follow the command during the operation? After that (the committee) will release full information."

Myanmar is refusing entry to a UN panel that was tasked with investigating allegations of abuses after a smaller military counteroffensive launched in October 2016.

But domestic investigations - including a previous internal military probe - have largely dismissed refugees' claims of abuses committed during security forces' so-called "clearance operations".

Thousands of refugees have continued to arrived cross the Naf river separating Myanmar's Rakhine state and Bangladesh in recent days, even though Myanmar insists military operations ceased on Sept 5.

Aid agencies now estimate that 536,000 people have now arrived in Cox's Bazar district, straining scarce resources of aid groups and local communities.

About 200,000 Rohingya were already in Bangladesh after fleeing persecution in Myanmar, where they have long been denied citizenship and faced restrictions on their movements and access to basic services.

Myanmar's de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has pledged accountability for human rights abuses and says Myanmar will accept back refugees who can prove they were residents of Myanmar.

The powerful army chief has taken a harder stance, however, telling the US ambassador in Myanmar earlier this week that the exodus of Rohingya - who he said were non-native "Bengalis" - was exaggerated.

In comments to Japan's ambassador carried in state media on Friday, Min Aung Hlaing denied ethnic cleansing was taking place on the grounds that photos showed Muslims "departing calmly rather than fleeing in terror".
https://bdnews24.com/world/2017/10/...reports-of-killings-abuse-of-rohingya-muslims

 

[Banglar Bir]

‘Don’t be swayed by Suu Kyi’s poisonous snakes’
www.thestateless.com/2017/10/dont-be-swayed-by-suu-kyis-poisonous-snakes.html

By Mizanur Rahman Khan | Prothom Alo
Dr Maung Zarni flew in from London to Kuala Lumpur to testify as an expert witness before the International Peoples Court Tribunal on the genocide committed by his native country Myanmars military forces against the Rohingya.

He spoke to Prothom Alo’s joint editor Mizanur Rahman Khan on 21 September 2017. They subsequently also communicated by e-mail for the following interview.

Dr. Maung Zarni was born in 1963 into a Burmese Buddhist family in Mandalay, a year after General Ne Win came to power in a military coup.He has been a human rights activist for nearly 30 years and has written extensively on democratisation, Islamophobia and Rohingya genocide. He was educated at the universities of Mandalay, California, Washington and Wisconsin from which he earned his PhD in Curriculum and Instruction in 1998.

He has had wide academic involvement at the London School of Economics, Oxford, Harvard, UCL-Institute of Education and other prestigious institutions. The Parliament of the Worlds Religions honoured him with the ‘Cultivation of Harmony Award’ in 2015 for his interfaith human rights activism worldwide. The Myanmar government and media outlets have denounced him as ‘national traitor’ and ‘enemy of the State’ for his opposition to the Myanmar genocide.

Prothom Alo: How do you see the Myanmars latest quest to resolve the Rohingya crises?

Maung Zarni : Aung San Suu Kyi has assigned three civil diplomats to handle the issue abroad. Thaung Tun, her national security adviser, just about 10 days ago went to New York and delivered his North Korean-esque unbelievable official remarks at the recent Security Council, denying everything factual and documented about the genocidal killings and expulsion of Rohingya. He was a former interpreter for the retired dictator Senior General Than Shwe and ambassador to the Philippines.

Then Kyaw Tint Swe, a key civilian career diplomat who has spent entire career serving the military regimes since Ne Wins time, is now Suu Kyis minister for the state counsellors office. He helped take the wind out of the sails in May 2008 when the regime came under enormous pressure to allow access to the cyclone victims stranded without emergency relief or drinking water. He came to Dhaka to deceive Hasinas government about the Suu Kyi government’s intention to take Rohingyas back, in order to diffuse international pressure and divert the attention away from the genocidal persecution in his country.

Then Win Mra, a Rakhine careerist in the foreign affairs ministry, like the other two, has climbed the ladder by defending the militarys human rights records at the international meetings in New York, Geneva, etc. He now heads the so-called National Human Rights Commission, which does not respect the rights of Rohingyas to self-identify.

The generals themselves are incapable of mounting self-defence credibly in any international forums because of their poor education and limited command over English.

Suu Kyi is surrounded by these men whom I would not hesitate to call poisonous snakes.

Dr Maung Zarni is seen (extreme right) with officials at the Dagon hall at Ministry of Defense at Yangon. The present Burmese Joints Chief of Staff General Mya Tun Oo (in uniform on the left) and Vice President Lt-General (retd) Myint Swe (in plainclothes on his right). The photo was taken in 2005.

Prothom Alo: Are you optimistic about the resumption of repatriation?

Maung Zarni: The repatriation proposal is a tactical move by the regime, whose ultimate strategic scheme is to destroy the Rohingyas existence, history, identity and legality. If in doubt, read the 25-year collection of UN documents, human rights documentations and press clippings going back to 1978. And Rohingyas do not want to go home. Would you, were you a Rohingya?

Prothom Alo : You joined in a discussion with Suu Kyi at a London School of Economics (LSE) roundtable. Did she utter the word ‘Rohingya’ in the meeting?

Maung Zarni: The LSE roundtable was held on 18 June, a week after the first bout of violence in Rakhine in 2012. No, she did not utter the word ‘Rohingya’ nor did she weigh in on the issue of persecution. Precisely because she was unprepared to handle this emerging global concern, I was pre-assigned to address the question that was pre-submitted in writing as the attendees sent in their questions that they wanted put to her.

Only a few days ago in Oslo, Norway, the US National Public Radio (NPR) correspondent Anthony Kuhn confronted her with the question, Do you know if Rohingyas are Myanmar citizens? Her response was I dont know.

Prothom Alo: Can you give us any instance where she had mentioned the rights of the Rohingya?

Maung Zarni : A fellow Burmese dissident Ko Aung, who met with her after the LSE meeting, was one of the organisers of her first ever visit back to UK since 1988. According to Ko Aung, she agreed with my stance that Rohingyas deserved full citizenship of our country, but she did not agree that they should be recognised as an ethnic group of Burma.

That was the view I also had back in June 2012 as my knowledge about the international law granting the minorities of different countries the right to self-identify was not adequate or accurate. Furthermore, my understanding of the genocide as an identity-based attack on an ethnic or religious group was also inadequate and inaccurate.

Prothom Alo : Did you ever talk to Suu Kyi?

Maung Zarni: I did talk to Suu Kyi, by nothing substantive.

Prothom Alo: Is it possible to recall the exact words that she used in the LSE meeting on the Rohingya problem?

Maung Zarni: She did not say a single word about Rohingya to me, directly. So it was a second hand account I heard first hand from my colleague Ko Aung.

Prothom Alo: Is it not significant that at least she had demonstrated her willingness, although not publicly, to give citizenship to the Rohingyas?

Maung Zarni: Yes.

Prothom Alo : Did not she utter anything in the days of her pro-democracy and human rights movement about the rights of Rohingya , Kachin and Muslims other than Rohingya?

Maung Zarni: No, she did not say anything specific about Rohingyas rights during her human rights movement days. But Rohingyas supported her overwhelmingly. She travelled to North Rakhine, met with Rohingya activists and communities when she was campaigning for her National League for Democracy party for the first time in 1989. Rohingyas in fact joined the NLD and founded a local NLD office to support her.

Prothom Alo : What was her policy to woo Muslims voters?

Maung Zarni: She made the unilateral decision not to field a single Muslim candidate on her NLD ticket in 2015. The early human rights movement of Burma was not infested with this level of vile anti-Muslim racism. Many of her key advisers and supporters were Muslims in the early formative years of the opposition following 1988 nation-wide uprisings. Some of them such as the writer and ex-Naval commander Captain Ba Thaw (aka Maung Thaw Ka, penname), were tortured to death for their support of Aung San Suu Kyi.

Prothom Alo: Was the captain Ba Thaw Muslim?

Maung Zarni: Yes, naval commander Ba Thaw was a Burmese Muslim from upper Burma town called Shwe Bo, but made his career in the Burma Armed Forces and lived in Rangoon.

Prothom Alo: Is it true that Rohingyas opted for the Japanese side during the World War II and for Pakistan during the Indian partition in 1947?

Maung Zarni: No, Rohingyas stayed loyal to the British. Rakhine Buddhist nationalists sided with the fascist Japanese occupiers during World War II.

Yes, a faction of the Rohingyas, led by a Rohingya Muslim officer in the British Army, did seek to join East Pakistan on the eve of Burmas independence. But the overwhelming majority of Rohingyas were peaceful and collaborated with the Burmese Army to put down this Rohingya secessionist movement. That was one of the reasons the Burmese Army embraced Rohingyas as a peaceful ethnic community and supported their call for ethnic minority recognition as Rohingya, distinct from 16 other Muslim communities scattered across the country.

Prothom Alo : What about ARSA? How do you see the alleged secessionist movement by the Rohingya people?

Maung Zarni: I don’t know about the ARSA, but the Rohingya secessionist movement is not exceptional or unusual for ethnic minorities. Rakhine Buddhists were fighting for their sovereignty which they lost to the Burmese feudal state on 1 Jan 1785. Other ethnic minorities such as Karen Christians also sought independence, and so have the Kachin, Shan, Karenni, etc. at various points in the countrys post-independence history. It is racist and unfair to keep portraying the Rohingyas as seeking a separate territory for themselves.

Prothom Alo: There is a perception in some quarters among the Bangladeshi people that Rohingyas are keen to get autonomy and that could irritate the Burmese authorities.

Maung Zarni: Indeed, no Rohingya leader, inside or among the diaspora, is demanding anything special for Rohingyas. They only want to live in peace, with basic human rights and legal citizenship, which they enjoyed fully in the 1950s and 1960s in western Burma where their roots have been put down for generations. It is patently false to say – as a former Bangladeshi ambassador to Burma claimed in his Dhaka Tribune interview recently – that once Rohingyas are recognised as an ethnic group they would be entitled to an autonomous status.

There are many ethnic groups that are officially considered ethnic groups of Burma, but only a handful are granted distinctly ethnic region status.

Prothom Alo : What about the response of Burmese monks to the crisis? Do not you see anything positive happening to embrace the Rohingyas within the territory of Myanmar?

Maung Zarni: Absolutely nothing positive is arising out of the predominantly Buddhist civil society. The societal response to the genocide of Rohingyas makes me think Myanmar society today is far more thoroughly brainwashed and genocidal towards Rohingyas than Nazi Germany at the height of Hitlers power, for there was serious resistance from the conservative elements and German communists towards the Nazi genocide. But there is no such resistance in Burma today. There is, however, a parallel between the collaborating role the Christian churches, both Protestant and Catholic, played in the Nazi genocide and the cheer-leading role the Buddhist Order, by and large, has been playing.

It is chilling that the men and women who call themselves monks and nuns help popularise the genocidal view towards Rohingyas. The main problem is the Burmese public, including monks, have been subjected to this extremely effective state propaganda which portrays falsely Rohingyas as illegal Bengalis, who are land-grabbing, extremist Islamists hell-bent on setting up an Islamic nation in North Arakan or Rakhine with help from Bangladesh and the Middle East. The public and the monks are completely delusional and fear-stricken, and they do not know the realities of Rohingyas and what the countrys military is doing to this Muslim community for nearly 40 years.

Prothom Alo : Were the Rohingyas given the status of indigenous ethnic minority in 1948 amended citizenship law as Kula or Kala not as Rohingyas?

Maung Zarni: In the amended Citizenship Law all inhabitants of Arakan were mentioned under the single ‘indigenous’ category, Arakanese, which included both Buddhist Rakhines and Rohingya Muslims, as well as other smaller ethnic communities.

Prothom Alo: Certain information and photographs indicate that you have had good relations with the Burmese junta. Will you explain?

Maung Zarni: Three generations of my extended family have served in the Burmese Armed Forces since its founding under WWII Japans patronage in 1942. My late great uncle Zeya Kyaw Htin, Lt. Col. Ant Kywe (recipient of Maw Gun Wun or National Chronicle 1st Class), was deputy chief of the predominantly Rohingya administrative district called Mayu in 1961, at a time when Rohingyas were recognised as an ethnic group of the Union of Burma, with full political citizenship, by both the civilian government of Prime Minister U Nu and General Ne Win.

I initiated the Track II (diplomacy without a license) between Myanmar military and international entities including several Western governments and the International Labour Organisation, between 2005 and 2008. I returned only briefly to Burma where I had three meetings with Lt Gen Myint Swe in 2005 and 2006. But my Track II was carried out in UK where I returned to hold the visiting fellowship at Oxford 2006-2008. I stopped the initiative for engagement with the military when the regime blocked emergency aid to the Cyclone Nargis victims in May 2008.

Prothom Alo : We are curious to know about your photograph with the present Burmese Militarys General Chief of Staff Gen. Mya Tun Oo.

Maung Zarni: The photo was taken at Dagon Hall, Ministry of Defence in Yangon on 29 Oct 2005. Gen. Mya Tun Oo was the liaison officer between Myint Swe and me. He was a Lt Col at the time. I had a meeting with the then Lt Gen Myint Swe, who was my host, when I returned to Burma ending 17-years of my exile in USA, in order to work with the government to push for re-normalisation of Burmas foreign relations with the West.

Prothom Alo: Do you have any comments on the top brasss view on the crises?

Maung Zarni: The Burmese generals approach the Rohingya issue from their institutionalised perspective: Rohingyas do not belong in Burma as they falsely think that the Western Burma never had Muslim presence and that the pocket of Rohingyas is a threat to Burmas national security.

Prothom Alo : Do you recall anything from your past engagement with the top brass that has some relevance in present situation?

Maung Zarni: No, during my four years of engagement with the Burmese top brass (2004-2008), Rohingyas were not a concern to them. In fact, I was as ignorant as an average Burmese. So the issue was never discussed. I didnt even know the extent of the persecution or Rohingya history or identity back then.

Prothom Alo: What about Myanmar’s attitude towards Bangladesh?

Maung Zarni: I suspect there was a negative attitude towards a new independent state of Bangladesh for two reasons: One, the close ties between Pakistan and Burma armies. Pakistan continues to train hundreds of Burmese military intelligence officers. The Burmese military has built strong ties with Pakistan since the two countries independence in 1947 and 1948 respectively. Two, the generals are absolutist statists, who oppose secession of regions both in principle and reality.

Bangladesh and Burma have never had any genuinely positive ties since 1971.

Prothom Alo: Thank you.

Maung Zarni: Thank you.

 

[Banglar Bir]

Lady and her generals
Subir Bhaumik, October 14, 2017

“Aung San Suu Kyi and her generals” ran a headline in The New York Times, as if she controlled them. The fact is she does not but has to take all the blame for what they do.

Two months after the Rakhine imbroglio boiled into a major regional crisis after the Aug24-25 jihadi attacks on 30 police station and one military base, the Lady has been fighting a silent battle to control her generals, at whose orders troops of the Tatmadaw went berserk in Rakhine, torching Rohingya villages, killing civilians, raping women and even throwing children in fire.

Against the wishes of the all-powerful Tatmadaw (Burmese army), she instituted the 9-member commission headed by former UN secretary general Kofi Annan, six of whom were foreigners and only three Burmese. Again, against the wishes of the men in uniform who have ruled Myanmar since 1962, Suu Kyi accepted Annan commission’s recommendations and promised to set up an inter-ministerial committee on August 24 to implement those.

But when the ARSA fighters attacked 30 police stations and the military base in northern Rakhine within hours of Kofi Annan meeting Suu Kyi and President Htin Kyaw, the game slipped out of Suu Kyi’s hands.

Authoritative sources in Myanmar government say the generals, three of them hoiding the crucial portfolios of defence, home and border affairs in her cabinet, put their foot down and told the Lady (as they refer to her) to let them handle a national security situation.

For a while, the Lady lost her script, weighed down by not only the generals but an inflamed public opinion manipulated skilfully by Buddhist hardline nationalists.

Here lies the paradox — the Lady could have told the generals the attacks happened because they failed, because their intelligence network in Rakhine came a cropper — or else how could a relatively poorly trained jihadi group like the ARSA pulled off coordinated attacks on 30 police stations and a military base killing 12-13 security men!

Such an operation would have been planned for months, not weeks and would have involved considerable mobilisation of fighters and armed villagers specially between 22-24th August.

So, if that is missed, one can safely surmise the Burmese military as well as civilian intelligence totally failed.

But if one were to understand the dynamics of Burmese government and the way the army and the NLD is involved in a tussle for control, they would stay away from taking un-nuanced positions like making demands for stripping Suu Kyi of her Nobel Prize.

But though the furious global criticism may have somewhat dented Suu Kyi’s global image, it has helped her in her desperate bid to control the army.

Top government sources say a recent high-level meeting in Naypyidaw found the civilian ministers of NLD and the generals in charge of the three crucial ministries taking on each other over possible implications of the global criticism.

Some ministers raised the scare of fresh sanctions, others spoke of possible cutdown in development aid and a few raised the issue of the impact of the Rakhine crisis on the ceasefire process that involves negotiations with much stronger rebel groups but has been cold storaged after late August.

Suu Kyi has been able, through her loyal NLD ministers, get it across to the army that they have to exercise restraint in counter-insurgency operations and the government has to start the process of taking back Rohingyas, even if it began as trickle.

That, she reasoned, would deflect some criticism from the global community including the UN and the West which once treated Suu Kyi as a darling and a pro-democracy icon but have been scathing in their criticism belatedly.

A top secretary told this writer that Suu Kyi was somewhat rattled when Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina returned home and alleged that Myanmar has been trying to provoke a war.

Avoiding a conflict with Bangladesh is important for Suu Kyi because a war would mean playing into the army’s hand.

The longer the crisis lingers in Rakhine and surely if there is a military confrontation with Bangladesh, the better the chance for the army to create grounds for a regional emergency that is prelude to a quasi-military rule that NLD pro-democracy hardliners feel may provide opportunity for a return to power for the Tatmadaw by the backdoor.

A top NLD leader, on condition of anonymity, made it clear that Suu Kyi and her party, though mindful of the threat of a regional jihad, were keen to use negotiations and peaceful means to end the crisis before it spun out of control.

He said the military has been told of the dangers of sanctions and the adverse economic impact of the Rakhine crisis that may drive up unemployment and create unrest across the country.

The corridors of power in Naypyidaw is abuzz with the silent wrestling for influence between Myanmar’s ruling party and its embattled leader on the one hand and the still-powerful military on the other.

During a forum on Myanmar’s democratic transition in August, military participants made it clear the army was reconciled to working under a civilian government.

That may be true, but the tussle for supremacy is a fact of life — something that most observers in the West and elsewhere are missing out on.
http://southasianmonitor.com/2017/10/14/lady-and-her-generals/

 

[Banglar Bir]

How west is trying to recreate Myanmar’s crisis in Thailand
by Tony Cartalucci | Published: 00:05, Oct 14,2017 | Updated: 22:25, Oct 13,2017

MEDIA platforms either directly funded by the United States government or by their political proxies in Thailand, including US-funded Prachatai and Khao Sod English, have begun investing increasing amounts of energy into fuelling a currently non-existent sectarian divide in Thai society.

They are concentrating their efforts in promoting the activities of a small anti-Muslim movement in Thailand’s northeast region often referred to as Issan. Issan — it is no coincidence — is also the epicentre of previous US efforts to divide and overthrow the political order of Thailand via their proxy Thaksin Shinawatra, his Pheu Thai Party, and his ultra-violent street front, the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD or ‘red shirts’). Shinawatra and his political proxies were ousted from power in 2014 by a swift and peaceful military coup.

Today, temples affiliated with Shinawatra’s political network are turning from a tried and tired, primarily class-based narrative, to one targeting Thailand’s second largest religion — Islam, in hopes of dividing and destroying Thai society along sectarian lines.

From northern cities like Chiang Mai to the northeast in provinces like Khon Kaen, suspiciously identical movements, with identical tactics, organised across social media platforms like Facebook are protesting Mosques, calling for specific acts of violence against Muslims, and using the same sort of factual and intellectually dishonest rhetoric peddled by veteran Western Islamophobes used to fuel the West’s global campaign of divide, destroy, and conquer everywhere from the US and Europe itself, to Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and more recently, Myanmar and the Philippines in Southeast Asia.
Tools of empire: divide and conquer
MYANMAR, which borders Thailand, currently finds itself at the apex of nationalist and racist-driven violence targeting its primarily Muslim Rohingya ethnic minority. Groups of supposed ‘Buddhists’ who form a more deeply rooted version of what the US and its proxies are trying to create in Thailand, were used to both create a deep sectarian divide where once there was coexistence, and to help put the US and European-funded political network of Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy party into power.

The humanitarian crisis created in Myanmar serves several functions for the US and its European partners who have meticulously cultivated it over the course of several decades.

First, it allows the West to continuously hold significant leverage over the current government — one who at any moment may be tempted to break away from its decades-long Western sponsors and collaborate with a more local, sustainable, and constructive partner like China.

Second, because the Rohingya crisis is highly localised to Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine, it also presents a highly controlled conflict the US can use to introduce foreign-funded terrorism, and in turn, create a pretext for Western ‘counter-terrorism’ assistance in the form of US and European troops, military assets, and even bases on the ground.

A small contingent of Saudi-funded and directed militants has already been introduced into Myanmar’s ongoing crisis and will likely be expanded until US military ‘assistance’ and thus the first stage in establishing a permanent military presence in Myanmar can be justified.

This would fulfil a long-term goal the United States has sought to achieve in Southeast Asia — the permanent positioning of US military assets in a nation directly bordering China.

A similar scenario is unfolding in the Philippines — a nation that was decisively shifting away from Washington — a one time colonial power over the Philippines — in favour of closer and more constructive ties with Beijing. The nation is now faced with a sudden surge in foreign-funded terrorists — a surge so significant, militants managed to take over the southern city of Marawi resulting in full-scale military operations including airstrikes in order to retake it.

Amid the manufactured crisis featuring terrorists sponsored by the United States’ closest Persian Gulf allies — specifically Saudi Arabia — the US found itself with the perfect pretext to reassert itself militarily and geopolitically over an increasingly independent Philippines.

The Daily Beast in its article, ‘The Philippines Is Destroying the City of Marawi to Save It From ISIS,’ would attempt to portray the US-Saudi engineered crisis and subsequent pretext for the US military’s expanded role in the Philippines as more ironic and coincidental than part of a cynical plan, claiming:
‘The Mautes have pledged allegiance to the so-called Islamic State, and use many of the tactics that the terror group honed in years of conflict in Iraq and Syria.

‘Despite vehement antagonism toward the US and its military expressed by Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte back in December, after the Mautes moved on Marawi in May, The New York Times reported US Special Operations Forces were here as advisers supporting Philippine operations in June.’
The Philippines represents the future of Myanmar once the crisis there reaches critical mass. For Thailand, the downward spiral of both the Philippines and Myanmar represents its own future should it allow the sociopolitical rot of sectarian divide take root at home.

For the US — it has sought for decades to encircle and contain China along multiple fronts. This includes across Southeast Asia where US policymakers envision a united front composed of US-backed client states used to box China in — or a series of failed and dysfunctional states that prevent China from developing any beneficial ties with its neighbours to the south.

Considering the success the US is having in the Philippines and Myanmar regarding its use of terrorism and reactionary sectarian division, it is logical that signs of US efforts in Thailand to do likewise are now appearing.
How the US and its proxies seek a sectarian divide in Thailand
MUSLIMS and Buddhists have coexisted in Thailand for centuries, with Thai Muslims an integral component of Thailand’s history and cultural fabric. Halal restaurants stand side-by-side Thai and Thai-Chinese cuisine, including those serving pork, in markets across the country. Mosques stand side-by-side with Buddhist temples. Buddhists and Muslims work side-by-side in businesses big and small nationwide.

While Thailand has a violent insurgency raging in its southernmost Muslim-majority provinces, of Thailand’s 7.5 million Muslims, only 1.4 reside in the deep south. The conflict is also seen as being primarily political, with militants targeting both Buddhists and Muslims in pursuit of their separatist goals. The rest live scattered across the country, and with significant communities coexisting in the capital of Bangkok itself.

For most Thais, the notion of Islamophobia is another facet of intolerance associated with a corrosive and declining Western culture — not Thai. Yet there are still fertile grounds of profound ignorance, gullibility, poor education and lacking economic prospects that make a fraction of the population still vulnerable to otherwise childish, crass propaganda seeking to divide and destroy Thai tolerance, unity, and culture — primarily among the dwindling support base of US proxy Thaksin Shinawatra.
Khao Sod — an unabashedly pro-US, pro-Shinawatra newspaper — recently published an article titled, ‘Rising Islamophobia in Thailand Irrational and Dangerous Scholars,’ written by veteran pro-West commentator Pravit Rojanaphruk, which would claim:

‘After Muslims in Khon Kaen registered a converted home as their place of worship — the northeast province’s seventh such venue — a local Buddhist group cited terrorism in its petition asking the governor to deny it.’

The article continues by stating:
‘Last week, a Thai monk who has called for mosques to be destroyed in revenge for Buddhist deaths in the Deep South was seized by the military and flown to Bangkok to be forcibly expelled from the order.

‘Pages such as No Mosques in Bueng Kan mix stories of violence in the Deep South with anodyne news stories involving Thai Muslims and toxic internet conspiracy theories about Muslims plotting to displace non-Muslim populations worldwide. The comments are filled with Muslim-bashing messages in Thai.’
And while the article appears at first to be laying the ground work to unequivocally condemn calls for specific acts of violence, bigotry, and hate speech, it adds an essential caveat — one used by the United States and its front of faux-rights advocates worldwide to shield both terrorists it sponsors, and reactionary fronts it encourages to divide and destroy nations.

The article states — in regards to the ‘monk’ who called for the destruction of mosques, who was detained and defrocked by the current Thai government — that:

‘Ekkarin said the junta’s detention and defrocking of radical anti-Islam monk Apichat Punnajanatho last week was wrong despite the hate preached by the monk because it resorted to using special power of the junta by detaining the monk at military camps first instead of going through the proper channel of having the Sangha Order investigates the matter. This, Ekkarin added, could lead to resentment by some Buddhists, particularly his supporters, and backfire.’

The article, along with US-funded media front, Prachatai, appear to condemn the Thai government for its zero-tolerance stance on terroristic speech, bigotry, and hate.

As the US and its network of media fronts around the world have done elsewhere, it is expected that attempts by the Thai government to stifle manufactured sectarian division will be systematically condemned by Western-funded fronts as violations of ‘human rights’ and in particular, violations of ‘free speech.’

Prachatai — a supposed ‘independent media platform’ entirely funded by the US government — published its own article regarding Punnajanatho and his calls to burn down mosques titled, ‘Buddhist authorities to defrock monks with ‘inappropriate’ online behaviour.’

In it, systematic complaints about the Thai government’s interference with Buddhism are made, in an apparent attempt to call government intervention inappropriate and unwarranted. For the US-funded scribes at Prachatai, Thailand’s best course of action appears to be to let the rot of sectarian division spread under the auspices of Western-style ‘free speech,’ just as it has in neighbouring Myanmar.

Yelling fire in a crowded theatre is not free speech

IN EVEN the most liberal nations on Earth, threats of specific harm against others or their property is considered a crime. Threats of death can be punished under US law with up to 20 years or more in prison. Likewise, deceiving people — particularly in a manner that causes physical harm — is also illegal and not protected under free speech. The classic ‘yelling fire in a crowded theatre’ example illustrates the very real harm intentionally deceitful words have and why it is not protected by free speech.

Similarly, networks suspiciously overlaying US-proxy Thaksin Shinawatra’s political networks, buried deep within his former political strongholds making specific threats of violence toward Thailand’s Muslim communities is not ‘free speech.’ It is a crime and it must be punished swiftly and severely.
Likewise, these networks propagating elementary lies about Islam in general, and about Thai Muslims more specifically, are designed to create social division and discord that will inevitably and intentionally lead to violence — as similar lies have done everywhere from across the West itself to neighbouring Myanmar.

It is the equivalent of ‘yelling fire in a crowded theatre’ with the specific goal of provoking dangerous and unwarranted hysteria, chaos, division, and bodily harm to those subjected to these lies.

US-funded media fronts attempting to frame this reality in any other way — particularly in a manner meant to hinder the government from addressing it before it spirals out of control — is merely another example of how the US and its proxies hide their self-serving political agendas behind the principles of human rights advocacy rather than genuinely upholding them. They position themselves as accessories to criminals using threats and lies to divide and destroy peace and stability in Thailand, and should likewise be held accountable.
The other side of the divide
WHILE US-funded organisations and political networks run by their proxies in Thailand attempt to work one side of this engineered sectarian divide, the Thai government must be quick to spot and address US-Saudi attempts to spur similar lies, deceptions, and provocations from the other side — among Muslim groups or those posing as Muslims provided with foreign cash and directives to help fulfil the lies being used to divide Thai society.

Just as is done in the US and Europe — where Western governments fund and perpetuate both terrorists and anti-Islam movements to create a sustainable strategy of tension between both, they seek to likewise create a self-feeding crisis in Thailand where eventually staged provocations on both sides transform into real violence fuelled by reprisals and growing distrust among previously coexisting communities.

Thailand and other nations facing foreign-funded attempts to divide their society must take a proactive stance on exposing these efforts through intelligence operations and national media that serve national interests, fostering national unity, and creating clear and effective laws to unambiguously define and punish threats and hate speech — especially speech specifically designed to divide society and create violence.

Failing to stop this sectarian divide from swallowing Southeast Asia may make the difference between a prosperous and peaceful future for the region, or perpetual violence and division as the West has successfully maintained in the Middle East since the end of World War 1.

New Eastern Outlook, October 12. Tony Cartalucci, a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher, writes especially for the online magazine New Eastern Outlook.
http://www.newagebd.net/article/26078/how-west-is-trying-to-recreate-myanmars-crisis-in-thailand

12:00 AM, October 14, 2017 / LAST MODIFIED: 04:47 AM, October 14, 2017
Another eyewash?
Myanmar military opens internal probe into conduct of soldiers
Star Report

Myanmar's military has launched an internal probe into the conduct of soldiers during an offensive that has sent more than half a million Rohingyas fleeing to Bangladesh, many saying they witnessed killings, rape and arson by troops.
A committee led by Lieutenant-General Aye Win has begun an investigation into the behaviour of military personnel, the office of the commander in chief said yesterday, insisting the operation was justified under Buddhist-majority Myanmar's constitution.

According to a statement posted on Senior General Min Aung Hlaing's Facebook page, the panel will ask, "Did they follow the military code of conduct? Did they exactly follow the command during the operation? After that [the committee] will release full information."

Myanmar is refusing entry to a UN panel that was tasked with investigating allegations of abuses after a smaller offensive was launched in October 2016, reports Reuters.

But domestic investigations, including a previous internal military probe, have largely dismissed refugees' claims of abuses committed during the so-called "clearance operations".

Refugees continue to arrive in Bangladesh fleeing the military crackdown in Rakhine, even though Myanmar insists the operation ceased on September 5. Aid agencies estimate that 5,36,000 Rohingyas have crossed over into Cox's Bazar.

According to Myanmar, the crackdown began on August 25 in response to Rohingya insurgent attacks on security posts.

But a UN report on Wednesday said, “The brutal attacks against the Rohingyas in northern Rakhine State have been well-organised, coordinated and systematic, with the intent of not only driving the population out of Myanmar but preventing them from returning to their homes.”

Rohingya survivors have told the UN the security forces began attacking Rohingya townships and villages weeks earlier, in early August.

Meanwhile, the European Union is reportedly set to cut ties with Myanmar over the alleged ethnic cleansing of Rohingyas. The bloc is also considering the use of sanctions if there is no improvement in the crisis.

Rohingya refugees who fled from Myanmar a day before walk to a relief centre in Teknaf of Cox's Bazar yesterday. Photo: Reuters
An agreement, which has been approved by EU ambassadors, has called for the violence to come to an end. However, it still needs to be signed off by the foreign ministers of the member countries, reports the UK-based The Independent.

“In the light of the disproportionate use of force carried out by the security forces, the EU and its member states will suspend invitations to the commander-in-chief of the Myanmar/Burma armed forces and senior military officers and review all practical defence cooperation,” according to a draft agreement prepared for a meeting of foreign ministers on Monday.

“The Council will adopt conclusions on Myanmar, in the light of the humanitarian and human rights situation in Rakhine State,” reads the agenda.

The EU presently does not allow the export of arms and equipment that will be used for "internal repression" and warned it would consider “additional measures" if the crisis continued.

Apart from the EU, the United States is also considering targeted sanctions against Myanmar military leaders over the offensive against the Rohingya populations.

MUSLIMS DEPARTING CALMLY!
The report on the Myanmar army launching probe comes at a time when its military chief Min Aung Hlaing told US Ambassador Scot Marciel that Rohingyas are not native to that country.

Instead of addressing the accusations of abuses by his army men, he rather said media was complicit in exaggerating the number of refugees fleeing.

Aung Hlaing, referring to Rohingya by the term "Bengali", which they regard as derogatory, said British colonialists were responsible for the problem.

"The Bengalis were not taken into the country by Myanmar, but by the colonialists," he told Marciel, according to the account of the meeting posted on Thursday.

"They are not the natives."

In comments to Japan's ambassador carried in state media yesterday, Aung Hlaing denied ethnic cleansing was taking place on the grounds that photos showed Muslims “departing calmly rather than fleeing in terror”.

While Bangladesh and UN agencies were tackling to cope with the influx, a Myanmar minister, at a meeting in Dhaka on October 2, offered to take back Rohingyas sheltered in Bangladesh.

Senior officials at Bangladesh foreign ministry and former diplomats saw it as a positive development but said there is no reason to trust Myanmar as the country may have an intention to defuse the global outcry over the persecution of Rohingyas.

“The Myanmar's move is absolutely eyewash and they have taken this initiative amid international pressure and condemnation,” said a high official of the government. “Bangladesh should not fall into the trap laid by Myanmar.”

On Tuesday, Bangladesh Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali said Myanmar has been unresponsive to Bangladesh's efforts to improve bilateral ties over the last two years.

Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi in a televised address on Thursday said her government was holding talks with Bangladesh on the return of “those who are now in Bangladesh.”

But she did not use the word “Rohingya” in her speech, although she referred to several other ethnic minorities by name.

UNHCR COLLECTING DATA
UNHCR has been working with the government in Bangladesh in the first stage of a new “family counting” exercise to collect data on the refugees and their needs.

Led by Bangladesh's Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commission (RRRC), the exercise has so far counted 17,855 families -- more than 70,000 individuals. At this initial stage, it is being carried out in the Balukhali extension and Kutupalong extension camps, he said.

On new arrivals from Bangladesh, the UNHCR spokesperson said some several hundred people are reported to have arrived overnight Thursday night and so far yesterday by boat.

Tomorrow, Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia Ahmad Zahid Hamidi will arrive in Bangladesh on a two-day visit to assess the situation of forcible displaced Myanmar nationals.

Zahid is expected to call on Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and travel to Cox's Bazar.
http://www.thedailystar.net/frontpage/another-eyewash-1476166

 

[Banglar Bir]

Press briefing by Mr. Kofi Annan, Chair of the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State on the situation in Myanmar.

https://www.facebook.com/

 

[Banglar Bir]

TRT World

Aung San Suu Kyi is widely criticised for not speaking out on behalf of the Rohingya.
But Asian powers like India and China support her.
So what does Myanmar have that these countries don't?

https://www.facebook.com/

 

[Banglar Bir]

It's a great lies to say that "Suu Kyi has NO power to stop Genocide!"

Wynston Lawrence
RB Opinion
October 12, 2017
Today so many people are giving reasons to mislead international communities that Suu has no power to stop Genocide or Ethnic Cleansing against Rohingya ethnic in Burma.

Their excuses were the Army who have had control defence forces of Burma. It's true that the Army has rights to propose three Ministers but the President has the rights to reject anyone and order the Army to propose another candidate. Well known fact is that Army took forcibly 25% of MPs in legislative power but Suu has more than enough MPs to propose any bill and enact any law, except the Constitution, without partnership with any political parties or the Army's MPs. All of following facts are what she can do according to the current Burmese laws and regulations.

1) She has an authority to recognise Rohingya as one of the indigenous ethnic groups of Burma according to the 1982 Burmese Citizenship Law and reinstate their rights. She no need to change the Law. She can do within weeks like her MPs had enacted the law to create her state counsellor position in 2016 within weeks.
Please note that Rohingya have been recognised as an indigenous ethnic group in the period of Democratic civilian U Nu government. Prime Minister U Nu also recognised Mayu District as autonomic region for Rohingya.
This Mayu district was directly administered by Central Government. Unfortunately, Dictator General Ne Win became in power 1962.
He later abolished Rohingya ethnic rights and autonomic District in his authoritarian rule.

2) She can form a large Emergency Immigration Team to process million of citizenship applications made by Rohingya ethnic.
Please note that if they have been recognised as indigenous ethnic group according to above-mentioned Act, Rohingya people will become native citizens of Burma if they can prove that they belong to Rohingya ethnic.
This may take some times but she can do within one year because of the previous dictatorship governments have already collected paramount datas for so many years, especially from 1974-2015. It's worthy to mention here that the previous President, ex-General Thein Sein admitted as "After we make ground investigation, there are nothing new comers from Bangladesh (after Burmese independent)." This interview was with VOA Burmese News.

And his immigration minister, ex-General Khin Yee also challenged the public who has doubts that there are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, they should come and check anytime. He told in interview with RFA Burmese News. He also pointed out that in Rakhine state, most of immigration officers and employees are Rakhine Buddhist ethnic."

He was right in this issue as there's no single ethnic Rohingya Muslim officer in immigration department. Rakhine authorities, they even have detail lists for animals that were owned by Rohingya ethnic. Suu can mobilise all available officers from every part of Burma to implement this mission. She can request technical and financial assistances from UN and INGO agencies.

3) She has more than enough MPs in Burmese Parliament to propose a bill of Racial Discrimination Act and vote to become a law of Burma. If this Act becomes active Law within one month, she can defeat any racists, religious bigots and trouble makers legally.

All of the Judges and lawyers of Burma are within her authority. It's true that she has no direct power over police forces and the Army but she can defeat them, if they create any minor problems, with the supports of lawyers, judges, political activists, NGO, INGO, international governments, UN and most importantly her largest supporters, the People.

4) She has power to make new an agreement with Bangladesh government to bring back all of the Rohingya refugees who have fled from ancestral home lands, Mayu District to Bangladesh because of Ethnic Cleansing. She announced that she will use an old agreement that was made by her enemies, previous dictator General Than Shwe government. She can do this within three months.

5) She has power to grant visas to the members of UN Facts Finding Mission to investigate human rights violations in Burma. They will investigate whether these violations are amounted to Ethnic Cleansing or NOT. This can be done within days.

6) She has power to give permission to National and International medias to go Rakhine state. She should respect freedom of press and allow them freely. But journalists need to agree any risks they may face from insurgents are totally depending on their own choices. She can give order to Minister of Home Affairs to provide security to journalists. If Minister is not agree, she has power to replace him via her puppet President.

7) She also has absolute power to allow any INGOs and NGOs to do their humanitarian works in Rakhine state and allow them to go freely within state. She need to lift any rules that were giving troubles to these agencies such as they need to apply repeated permissions to help who are in needs. She may face some troubles from Buddhist Rakhine who are very hostile to INGO and NGO although they have received more than fair shares from those organisations. But she can get supports from Police forces and media to enforce Rules of Laws. She can also do this within days.

8) She may face some protests for these implementations but she can persuade most of the people with short speech. Today there are a lot of rallies to express their standing with Suu. These will help her a lot. Some people need to be taken as seriously along with Police forces, local administrations, her MPs and part's members, democratic Saffron monks, medias and so on.

9) As she has no power to control the Army, she should agree to talk with ARSA insurgents for peace agreement. ARSA recently released a statement on Twitter, they are ready talk with Suu Kyist Administration for ceasefire.
She should not give full authority to Zaw Htay to speak on the behalf of her administration regarding with this issue. Zaw Htay is ex-militant and political critics have suspects regarding with his integrity, attitudes and background. He should be immediately replaced with someone who has reputation, skills and post democratic activist.

10) She should also conclude some portions of Rohingya ethnic leaders as Rakhine ethnic leaders in the Implementation Committee for the recommendations of Kofi Annan commission.
In conclusion, she can do most of the above-mentioned facts in short period of times if she is honest and free from racism as well as religious bigotry.
Wynston Lawrence is Political Analyst and Human Rights Activist based in Western Australia.
Follow on twitter @LawrenceWynston
http://www.rohingyablogger.com/2017/10/its-great-lies-to-say-that-suu-kyi-has.html