The Stateless Rohingya Blog

The Associated Press  May 5, 2013   YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Several women villagers from Myanmar's Rohingya minority have been shot dead in a confrontation with security officials, police and activists said Wednesday. A police officer in Mrauk-U township in western Rakhine state said Wednesday that three women died in Parein village, where they were part of a crowd that defied efforts to relocate them from the housing in which they have been living since their original homes were burned by Buddhists in a wave of sectarian clashes last year. The officer from the Special Branch political police, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to release information, said two men and two women were injured. A website covering Rohingya news, Rohingya Blogger, said four women were shot dead and five other villagers wounded in the Tuesday confrontation, which broke out when workers from another township came to unload wood to build new dwellings. It said that

Rohingya children play on a tent at Bawdupah camp for internally displaced people on the outskirts of Sittwe. Photograph: Soe Than Win/AFP/Getty Images The Guardian: June 3, 2013 The international community must put pressure on Burma to protect Rohingya Muslims and end segregation in Rakhine state How desperate and distrustful of your government do you have to be to refuse an  offer  of relocation when a cyclone is about to hit your home? That many of the displaced Rohingya people in  Burma 's Rakhine state took this decision demonstrates how difficult their lives have become. For months now, the Rohingya Muslim people have been targeted in a campaign that a  Human Rights Watch report  (pdf) has described as "ethnic cleansing". Rohingya Muslims in Burma have been forced into segregated  settlements  and camps, and – in many cases – cut off from lifesaving aid. I visited displacement camps in Rakhine in May with  Refugees International  and  Bu