The Stateless Rohingya Blog

(Reuters) - A committee of the U.N. General Assembly expressed serious concern on Monday over violence in  Myanmar  between Rohingya Muslims and Buddhists and called upon the government to address reports of human rights abuses by some authorities. The 193-nation General Assembly's Third Committee, which focuses on rights issues, approved by consensus a non-binding resolution, which  Myanmar  said contained a "litany of sweeping allegations, accuracies of which have yet to be verified."

US President Barack Obama gives a speech at the University of Rangoon on 19 November 2012. (Reuters) Barack Obama  visited Rangoon  on 19 November for six hours and received a rapturous welcome from many Burmese. In the first visit to the country by a standing US president, the short trip took on a historic dimension. However, it’s very difficult not to read the visit as an endorsement of the Burmese government and its transition to a “disciplined democracy”. 

SITTWE, MYANMAR - NOVEMBER 25: Mumtaz lays in a bed surrounded by patients waiting for medical care at a government run medical clinic. Despite unprecedented international and media attention to the most persecuted minority in the world in the wake of U.S. President Obama's likewise unprecedented state visit to the country of Burma, the situation has not even changed one bit for the Rohingya Muslims in the southwestern state of Rakhine. Although estimates of deaths are put at a few hundred or even a thousand by human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, it is likely that the death toll reaches well over those estimates as violence and persecution continue with the Burmese government essentially sanctioning and even participating in the ethnic cleansing.

Prof. Dr. Wakar Uddin, Director General of Arakan Rohingya Union, was invited by The European Rohingya Council (ERC) to Frankfurt, Germany, on November 20, 2012, while he was on his way to Geneva, Switzerland, to participate in meetings on Rohingya issues. Members of ERC, Burmese Rohingya Association in Deutschland (BRAD), representatives of Myanmar Muslim Organization based in Germany, and representatives of Turkish and Arab communities in Germany, gave a reception luncheon to the Director General. Following the reception, a meeting was held at the Islamic Community Center in Frankfurt.

Thein Sein has offered earlier a four-point plan to conciliate the two communities so that they can be able to live together with harmony. The plan includes changing mindsets of many people, promoting education, creating jobs and controlling birth. It was a good plan that brought glad tidings to the hearts of desperate Rohingyas and the ones who are concerned by the issue. But, alas! what is actually being implemented on the ground nowadays is a fifth point unmentioned in the plan. As if he is watering the top of a tree after cutting its roots.