The Stateless Rohingya Blog

Photo: UNOCHA/David Ohana Mizzima News: May 8, 2013 The Myanmar National Human Rights Commission has urged the government and the Central Committee for Implementation of Stability and Development in Rakhine State to urgently implement the recommendations of the Rakhine Investigation Commission in the strife-torn region. In a statement released in state-run newspaper The New Light of Myanmar on May 8, the rights group called for “just and effective actions to be taken in accordance with law against the perpetrators of the acts of violence that had occurred; steps to be taken to build mutual trust for the physical and mental rehabilitation of the victims”. It also recommended a special children's education program in the affected areas to build “mutual trust”. The Rakhine Investigation Commission's report released on April 29 recommended doubling security forces in the state, for Myanmar to “immediately” resolve Rohingya's citizenship status and recog

Kaladan Press : May 8, 2013 Maungdaw, Arakan State : A group of Nasaka and police have been trying to arrest Rohingya villagers of Hatipara (village) and Zedi Pyin villages of Maungdaw Township on May 6, over the allegation that terrorist group from Bangladesh entered the Maungdaw north, a school teacher from the locality said preferring not to be named. “On that day, at around 6:00 am, a group of Nasaka (Burma’s border security force) numbering in 10, from Nasaka area No.5 led by Major Than Htite Aung and a group of police from Bawli Bazar of Maungdaw north went to the said villages of Hati Para and Zedi Pyin villages of Lone Don village tract under Nasaka area No.5 and surrounded the villages. After that, the security forces tried to arrest villagers over the accusation that a terrorist group from Bangladesh penetrated to Maungdaw Township.” As a result, all the male villagers fled to nearby Mountain to avoid arrest, by Nasaka or police, said a local youth.

 Written by AFK  Jilani  Muslims of Arakan certainly belong to one of the indigenous races of Burma....In fact , there is no pure indigenous race in Burma, if they do not belong to indigenous races of Burma, we also cannot be taken as indigenous races of Burma": Sao Shwe Thaike, the first elected President of the Union of Burma.  Mr. Sultan Ahmed, son of a Landlord - Molvi Akramuddin, was born in 1901 at Molvi Para (Balukhali - Thaychaung), Maungdaw, Arakan, Burma; matriculated from the government Muslim High School, Chittagong in 1919; received B.A degree from the University of Calcutta in 1924 and B.L degree from Rangoon University in 1929; enrolled as Higher Grade pleader on 2nd December 1930 and practiced law both in Rangoon and Akyab; worked as an Assistant Township Officer (A.T.O) at Maungdaw from December 1942 to 7th June 1946; joined the Judicial department and became First Class Magistrate under British Government; President of the Jamait-e-Ulema, North Araka

Mustafa Akyol Hurriyet Daily News May 8, 2013 Burma, a country that has been tyrannized by a military junta since 1962, is being terrorized by an additional force these days: Buddhist militants, who carry out systematic arsons, tortures and massacres against the country’s tiny Muslim minority. First, a few facts: 89 percent of the population of Burma is Buddhist. Muslims only make up some 4 percent of the society. But they are a relatively affluent community, which has led to resentment against them by the militants of the majority. In Arakan (a.k.a. Rakhine), the only state where Muslims make up a majority, the Burmese government and the militants allied with them have initiated an “ethnic cleansing of Muslims” as the Human Rights Watch have put it. (See HRW Report titled, “Crimes Against Humanity and Ethnic Cleansing of Rohingya Muslims in Burma’s Arakan State.”) In the past two years, the campaign against Burmese Muslims has intensified. It is spearheaded by

Tibet's spiritual leader the Dalai Lama holds a speech at University of Maryland, US on May 7, 2013. PressTV: May 8, 2013 Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama has condemned extremist Buddhist monks’ attacks on Rohingya Muslims in the Southeast Asian country of Myanmar.   During a speech at the University of Maryland on Tuesday, the Dalai Lama said killing in the name of religion was “unthinkable.” "I think it is very sad," said Dalai Lama, adding, "I pray for them (the monks) to think of the face of Buddha," who had been a protector of Muslims. He continued by saying that the root of seemingly sectarian conflict was political, not spiritual. This comes as hundreds of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar are believed to have been killed and thousands others displaced in recent attacks by extremists who call themselves Buddhists. The extremists frequently attack Rohingyas and have set fire to their homes in several villages in Rakhine.

A policeman and residents stand around the body of a man in a street in riot-hit Meiktila, central Myanmar on March 22, 2013. STR/AFP/Getty Images) By SAI LATT  Irrawaddy News: May 8, 2013 The Burmese majority are in a state of denial that Burma now displays the early warning signs of genocide, “ethnic cleansing” or “crimes against humanity.” Rights activists are among them. Aung Myo Min, the director of Human Rights Education Institute of Burma (HREIB), has called the findings of last month’s Human Rights Watch report into violence in Arakan State “unacceptable.” By rejecting the use of the term “ethnic cleansing” to describe the attacks on Rohingya Muslims there, these people have become both active and passive accomplices to the crimes. The criminals enjoy safe haven, continuing to pursue a situation where full-scale mass killings are possible. They run the risk of staying silent while all the warning signs are there. Burmese tend to conflate “ethnic cleansing”

A Muslim Rohingya man sits at his burnt home at a villaged in Minpyar in Rakhine state in October. Matthew Smith CNN Opinion May 7, 2013 When the European Union recently lifted economic sanctions on Myanmar, it closed a decades-long chapter designed to encourage democratic reform in the country. Although an arms embargo remains in place, the action will send an unequivocal message of "mission accomplished." But while the EU is celebrating the "new Myanmar," Rohingya Muslims in the western part of the country are targets in what appears to be an ongoing campaign of government-supported crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. Killings and arson attacks between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims first erupted in Myanmar's Rakhine State in June 2012, and were followed in October by well-coordinated attacks on Rohingya populations. More than 125,000 Rohingya were forced into dozens of internally displaced camps while tens of

Alders Ledge: May 6, 2013 Rohingya Face Burmese Version Of The "Final Solution" (part of The Darkness Visible series) In 1940 the German occupiers in Poland began to move the three million plus Polish Jews into overcrowded and unsanitary ghettos. One of which was the now infamous Warsaw ghetto. It was here that the Jews of Warsaw were first met with the face of the Nazi "final solution". Their very existence in Poland had spawned a perverse question amongst the racially motivated extremist both in Poland and Germany alike. For the Nazis this question was often refereed to as the "Jewish question". It quite simply could be summed up as "how to kill or expel all Jewish peoples within Europe". However Warsaw showed us that had Hitler been more successful in his attempts to slaughter the Jewish people in Europe that his ambitions may very well had spread much further than Polish or European borders.  By 1942 the Germans had arrived at

ERC Delegation Meet Dr. Zarni Mohamed Farooq ( Mayu Press) May 7, 2013 The Stockholm University of Sweden held a seminar on “Forum for Asian Studies” at William Olsson Hall, the department of geological science on 3rd May 2013. It depicts Rohingya tragedy and Human Right Eradication in western Burma. Burma (Myanmar) is a nation with ambition to make their name and discharge their White Man’s Burden, one of the world’s hottest assignments in the world of diplomats, development consultants, NGO experts and academic researchers, a lucrative ‘frontier’ market for investors, venture capitalists and multinationals, a must-go for both citizen-tourists and global luminaries. This lecture will critically discuss the rose-tinted view of reforms in Burma against the troubling realties as lived by the people of that country, including full-scale Rohingya genocide of 40 years, the 60-years of Burmese army’s un-ending internal colonial wars against the Christian Kachins, the Kare