The Stateless Rohingya Blog

Mayu Press: March 24, 2013   By Mohamed Farooq   The Burmese Police got various hand-made weapons of Arakan Liberation Party (ALP) in two different townships of Arakan;   Kyauk Taw and Buthidaung on last few days back with the exact information of Rakhine old persons. On 12th March 2013, a police patrol team found out 18 guns in the forest near Nyung Kron village under Let Way Dak village tract of Buthidaung Township.  The other Police personnel grabbed 28 hand-made guns in a valley near Pri long mountain range situated between Myauk Taung and Malar village on 14 March 2013 in Kyauk Taw Township where violence had occurred and slaughtered many Rohingya Muslims. Simultaneously, they had got 29 guns more in the jungle of Alar Taung Mountain, five miles away from Nga Saung Bek village in Kyauk Taw. Moreover, some Rakhine habitants mostly from rural areas in Arakan  have to handover  726 hand-made guns, 130 swords, 506 javelins, 112 cross bows, 611 arrows, 1408

DARING TO DREAM: A Rohingya boy at the Phangnga Shelter for Children and Families looks up with his eyes full of hope for a better life. Bangkok Post: March 24, 2013 For thousands of Rohingya fleeing Myanmar’s troubled Rakhine state, the sleepy fishing village of Ban Hin Lat is the first port of call on their difficult quest to find better lives. If they make it to the village in the Khura Buri district of Phangnga they will find a relatively well-off fishing community and locals more than sympathetic to their plight. Most of the locals are Muslims, and some Myanmar nationals work legally on fishing boats. In the grounds of the local mosque, out of sight from the main road, is a 10m Rohingya vessel inscribed in Thai with the words “Rohingya people _ the forgotten citizens of the world”. Ga, a 43-year-old Thai Muslim who heads the unofficial Rohingya Help Centre in Hin Lat, says she had a negative attitude toward the Rohingya before she got to know them. “O

Burma Campaign UK March 24, 2013   Burma Campaign UK welcomes the United Nations Human Rights Council Resolution on Burma, passed by consensus on Thursday 21st March. The resolution highlighted serious human rights abuses which could violate international law, including ‘…arbitrary detention, forced displacement, land confiscations, rape and other forms of sexual violence, torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, as well as violations of international humanitarian law,…. violence, displacement and economic deprivation affecting persons belonging to national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities… armed conflict in Kachin State and the associated human rights violations and allegations of international humanitarian law violations, desecration of places of worship, sexual violence and torture…’ In a blow for President Thein Sein, the Burmese government failed in its attempt to have Burma moved from Item 4 of the Council’s agenda, ‘Human rights situation

Dr. Maung Zarni Irrawaddy News: March 24, 2013  When Dr. Maung Zarni, an outspoken activist academic, labeled the ongoing anti-Rohingya and anti-Muslim movement in Burma as neo-Nazi, some Burmese said Zarni was exaggerating. Western commentators have also avoided the term. But Zarni has been proven right by emerging photos of an anti-Muslim riot in Meikhtila in central Burma that broke out on March 20. The riot, which grew from a quarrel between Muslim gold shop owners and Buddhist customers, has taken more than 30 lives, and more than 10 mosques, Islamic schools and houses have been destroyed. Thousands of local residents, both Buddhist and Muslim, have fled the town, leaving Meikhtila with ashes, burnt buildings, flames and dead bodies. On the evening of March 21, the Rangoon-based Eleven News published photos of a long queue of Muslims being forced to leave the town. What is significant in the photos is that the refugees, including women, children and elders,

Vijay Nambiar, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s special adviser on Myanmar, looks at debris of the buildings destroyed during the ethnic unrest between Buddhists and Muslims in Meikhtila, about 550 kilometers (340 miles) north of Yangon, Myanmar, Sunday, March 24, 2013. The top UN envoy to Myanmar toured a central city Sunday destroyed in the country's worst explosion of Buddhist-Muslim violence this year, calling on the government to punish those responsible for a tragedy that left dozens of corpses piled in the streets, some of them charred beyond recognition.(AP Photo/Khin Maung Win) Radio Australia‎   March 24, 2013 The United Nations envoy to Myanmar has spent Sunday visiting the central town of Meiktila destroyed by deadly communal riots. The United Nations envoy to Myanmar has spent Sunday visiting the central town of Meiktila destroyed by deadly communal riots. Vijay Nambiar, the UN special adviser on Myanmar, met some of the estimated 9,000 people

By Dr. Habib Siddiqui    MARCH 23, 2013 It was not too long ago that we witnessed the grisly massacre of minority Rohingya Muslims in the Arakan (Rakhine) state of Myanmar (Burma). Many of the western observers who grew up seeing the smiling face of Dalai Lama were simply shocked to see armed Buddhist monks participating in that ethnic cleansing of the unarmed Rohingya Muslims. Not only had the monks participated in those violent criminal acts with their fellow Buddhist Rakhine zealots terrorizing the minority Muslims of the western frontier state but they were also guilty of providing the very rationale – a criminal one - for such inhuman crimes against the members of a non-Buddhist faith who were different ethnically, culturally and religiously. In that pogrom, while we may never know the exact casualty figure because of government complicity in the tragedy – Rohingyas probably died in thousands, and hundreds remain unaccounted for even after nine months. With inter

Makkah Gov. Prince Khaled Al-Faisal with OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu at the ceremony in Makkah on Saturday. (AN photo by Ahmed Hashad) Arab News:  March 24, 2013 Makkah Gov. Prince Khaled Al-Faisal yesterday distributed free residency permits (iqamas) to the first applicants of the Burmese community in a historic move to legalize the status of nearly 500,000 refugees in the Kingdom. “This is one of the beautiful moments in my life,” said Prince Khaled while addressing a ceremony at Kudai near Makkah. He thanked Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah for issuing his instructions to correct the residency status of a huge group of expatriates who have been living in the Kingdom for several years. “It was one of the first proposals I presented to King Abdullah after becoming the governor of Makkah,” Prince Khaled said to the applause of the large gathering including OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu and Burmese community leaders. “King