The Stateless Rohingya Blog

By STEPHEN BLOOM Burma’s President Thein Sein gave his first interview to a member of the foreign media this week when he answered a wide range of questions from Lally Weymouth, senior associate editor for  The Washington Post , which touched on most of the top issues currently being discussed about Burma. In the interview, published in The Washington Post on Friday, Thein Sein proved to be a skillful politician, diplomat and negotiator, as he repeatedly pressed the main talking points he wanted to communicate to his international audience and deftly sidestepped issues that are problematic for his government. Thein Sein said that peace, stability and economic development were the goals of his government’s reform measures, and used the pulpit provided by a leading US newspaper to make his case for the lifting of US and EU sanctions. “. . . the US and the EU have had economic sanctions on our country. It has been [for] nearly 20 years now. I would like to see them ease . . . and

  By Emma Batha A Rohingya mother is seen with her child in a refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, August 19, 2011. in a refugee camp in Cox's Bazar. REUTERS/Andrew Biraj LONDON (AlertNet) - A major campaign to shine a spotlight on the world’s estimated 12 million stateless people has led to “a real sea change” in attitudes, with many countries now taking steps to tackle the problem, a U.N. expert says. They include Senegal, Liberia and Benin which have promised to ditch discriminatory laws that bar women from passing on their nationality to their children – a key cause of statelessness in many countries. Turkmenistan has started granting nationality to thousands of stateless people, Georgia has amended its citizenship legislation and Croatia and Serbia are helping stateless Roma obtain documents. A stateless person is someone who is not recognised as a citizen by any country and has no rights to the benefits most of us take for granted. They are often unable to work, access healthcare

MIZZIMA NEWS Burmese President Thein Sein has given his first-ever foreign interview to the  The Washington Post , which was published on Friday, January 20. Reporter Lally Weymouth spoke with him in Naypyitaw in a wide-ranging interview that covered Aung San Suu Kyi as a possible cabinet minister, establishing peace in ethnic areas, North Korea and other issues. Burmese President Thein Sein speaks in Parliament wearing traditional Burmese dress. Photo: Mizzima Her first question was why did Thein Sein undertake a reform process that has moved Burma toward democracy in a series of governmental laws and decrees during 2011. “The reform measures are being undertaken based on the wishes of the people [who want] to see our country have peace and stability as well as economic development,” he said. “To have internal peace and stability and economic development, it is important to have good relations with the political parties that we have in our country. That is why we ha

By  Mizzima – Speaking in Vietnam before he arrives in Burma on Friday evening, U.S. Senator John McCain said with a free and fair April 1 by-election, some U.S. sanctions could be lifted. US Sen. John McCain at a press conference at the United States Information Service office in Dagon Township in Rangoon in June 2011. Photo: Mizzima McCain, who is traveling with Senator Joe Liberman, said Burma could expect “some response from the United States in terms of the status quo between our countries as it exists now.” “And certainly lifting of the sanctions, or some of them, would be part of that consideration,” McCain said. The United States has upgraded diplomatic ties with Burma following the recent release of hundreds of political prisoners, saying more rewards would follow with concrete steps toward democracy and improving human rights, particularly in ethnic areas. Recently, Burma launched a series of moves designed to move the country towards democracy.   McCain, a former navy p

By THE IRRAWADDY Khin Nyunt in better times. (Photo: AP Less than a week after his release from more than seven years under house arrest, Burma's former spy chief Khin Nyunt has described ethnic unity as the “greatest challenge” facing the country as it attempts to emerge from decades of internal conflict and international isolation. In an interview with the Burmese edition of the  The Myanmar Times  on Thursday, the once feared head of military intelligence and former junta prime minister said he welcomed the current government's efforts to resolve ethnic tensions in the country. He warned, however, that it would not be easy to end the distrust that has plagued relations between Burma's ethnic groups since the country became independent in 1948. “Actually, the ethnic armed groups and ethnic people are very honest,” he said, adding that he has worked closely with them for many years. In the lat 1980s and early 1990s, when he was at the height of his po

        The government moves, and gets its rewards            What a difference a year makes A LULL in Myanmar followed the excitement of secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s historic visit to the country in early December, the first by a senior American official in half a century. Perhaps, some even wondered, this was the point at which the reform process initiated by Myanmar’s president, Thein Sein, might come unstuck. Yet from the evidence of the past week, things are on track. On January 13th the government undertook the biggest yet in a series of releases of political prisoners: 302 according to the authorities, 287 according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma), a monitoring group in Thailand. Either way, it was a sizeable number and included many of the democratic opposition’s most prominent figures. Some had spent two decades in jail for their part in the first student uprisings against the military government in 1988. Several, including Nilar Th