The Stateless Rohingya Blog

By globalvoices The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees considers the situation of between 110-150,000 Burmese refugees located in camps on the border with Thailand as  one of 29 protracted refugee situations globally . And, according to East Asia Forum, there are also an  additional 1.5-2 million refugees in Thailand  and represent the ‘visible side of human rights abuse.' Ruled by a military junta from 1962 to 2011, Burma, known locally and by the United Nations as  Myanmar , has often been accused of violating human rights and the forcible relocation of civilians. Although an ostensibly civilian government was  controversially elected in 2010 , a quarter of seats in parliament as well as three cabinet seats are reserved for the army. Other concerns include the use of forced labour, among them children,  human trafficking  and internal ethnic conflict . In an extensive post, Mary Ditton, a Senior Lecturer in Health Management in Australia,  looks at the problem

By Ellie Bogue   Burmese students from Heritage High School got a chance to share their culture with some of their fellow students Thursday night during a member family dinner at Cornerstone Youth Center, Monroeville. Heritage senior Ka Bee spoke about his family's experience of leaving Burma, living in a Thailand Refugee Camp, and then coming to America. Ka Bee said his family walked for three days on foot to get over the Thailand border. He was born in the Thai refugee camp and lived there for the first 13 years of his life. Ka Bee's parents wanted to bring up their family under better conditions and were eventually able to get refugee status to come to the United States. They lived first in North Carolina, but the family was not comfortable living there because there were no other Burmese in the school Ka Bee attended or the neighborhood where the family lived. None of the family members spoke English. Luckily, they had relatives in Fort Wayne, so

Photo: AP A Myanmar activist puts cutouts of imprisoned Hla Hla Win, a reporter of the Norway-based Democratic Voice of Burma, on a wall near Myanmar Embassy during a rally in Bangkok, Thailand, (File September 9, 2011). Key advocates for Burmese political prisoners are calling for the international community to keep economic and trade sanctions in place until Burma’s government releases all political prisoners, including those detained in ethnic areas. United Nations agencies in Burma say an easing of sanctions is crucial to allow funds to support poverty alleviation programs in the country. The rights monitoring group, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, says the international community must maintain pressure on Burma’s government to ensure the release of all political prisoners before economic and trade sanctions are fully lifted. The secretary of the Thailand-based Association, Bo Gyi, himself a former political prisoner, spoke to foreign journal