The Stateless Rohingya Blog

End killings in Burma, say groups calling for action The Bolton News: April 6 2013 BURMA may be thousands of miles away but, as the violence against the country’s Muslims escalates, people in Bolton are coming together to call for action. A silent vigil by Bolton United for Peace and Burma Action Group last week will be followed by a similar event at 3pm today in Victoria Square. People in Bolton, whose parents and grandparents moved to the UK from Burma years ago, are calling for a stop to the violence and for action to be taken. They want to raise the profile of events happening in Burma to stop more people being killed. Among the group is a Daubhill mother-of-one who is terrified that her Muslim family in Burma will be harmed. The 34-year-old, who is too frightened to be named, said her relatives have been living in “absolute fear” since riots started in Burma on March 20, directed against Muslims. Muslims in Burma account for fewer than five per cent of the

Myanmar refugees from the Rohingya community, a predominantly Muslim sect, take refuge on a street. File Photo Voice of the Cape Radio: April 6, 2013 While international aid agencies have struggled to gain  access  into the unstable Myanmar (Burma), Durban based NGO – the Al Imdaad Foundation – has been on the ground assisting the Rohingya Muslims, left destitute by a surge of violence in the region recently. Rohingya, described by the United Nations as one of the world's most persecuted minorities, have fled Myanmar in their thousands since Buddhist-Muslim tensions exploded in their home state of Rakhine last year. Nine consecutive days of violence in  March  has left thousands of Rohingya Muslims displaced and in dire need of the most basic of necessities. Reporting back from a recent trip to the volatile region, Muhammad Saloojee from IAF said it was not easy to get to the Rohingya people. Humanitarian aid was not being allowed to camps without military int

Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh: Thousands of Rohingya refugees at an unofficial refugee camps in Bangladesh are facing starvation and acute malnutrition for their movement restriction from their camp, Nuru from refugee camp said. “The situation of political struggled up and down, the security force of Bangladesh beef up along the border and open more check points. The camps officials ordered not to go outside the camp and locals are also harassing the refugee while they went out of the camps.” “Most of the refugees were arrested at checked post along the border, when they tried to go for work for their survival.” Nearly 200 Rohingya refugees were arrested from different vehicles and areas after being conducted operation by the Bangladesh authorities along the border under the Cox’s Bazar district on April 5, according to refugees from unregistered Kutupalong camp. Some families in the unregistered Kutupalong makeshift camp haven’t eaten for days as they are not able to go o

PressTV:   April 6, 2013 The Rohingya Muslim community in Pakistan has staged a protest rally in the southern port city of Karachi to show their outrage at the ongoing violence in Myanmar. On Friday, protesters denounced the Myanmar government for its role in the violence against the Rohingya Muslims and called on international bodies to stop the persecution of Muslims in the country. Some 800,000 Rohingyas are deprived of citizenship rights due to the policy of discrimination that has denied them the right of citizenship and made them vulnerable to acts of violence and persecution, expulsion, and displacement. The Myanmar government has so far refused to extricate the stateless Rohingyas in the western state of Rakhine from their citizenship limbo, despite international pressure to give them a legal status. Hundreds of Rohingyas are believed to have been killed and thousands displaced in recent attacks by extremists who call themselves Bu

We the representatives of Civil Society of Afghanistan, India and Pakistan who are meeting for a South Asian Consultation for “Building Bridges: Civil Society in OIC Countries Engaging with the Multilateral Sphere” in Lahore, Pakistan, and are committed to universal human rights, democratic values and justice are deeply alarmed and distressed by the continued violence against the Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar that is leading to deaths of hundreds, countless injuries and destruction of property of innocent members of the Rohingya Community of Myanmar.  Over 150,000 Rohingyas are reported to have fled to neighbouring countries following the violence in June 2012 in Rakhine State in western Myanmar. The present outbreak in March 2013 in Meikhatila in Myanmar between Buddhists and Muslims has lead to fresh killings, destruction of property and businesses and declaration of state of emergency in the region. It is reported that a new wave of exodus of Muslims to the neighbouring countri