The Stateless Rohingya Blog

An assessment team talks to displaced people in Pauktaw camp in rural Rakhine, Myanmar, where more than 20,000 Rohingya live. Photo: mildren/OCHA UN News Centre 19 June 2013  The United Nations human rights chief today  urged  Myanmar’s Government to tackle continuing discrimination against ethnic minorities, warning that failure to act could undermine the reform process in the country. “Myanmar today can act as a source of inspiration by showing how governments can be transformed by a renewed commitment to human rights,” said the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay. “However, the ongoing human rights violations against the Rohingya community in Rakhine state and the spread of anti-Muslim sentiment across the State and beyond is threatening the reform process and requires focused attention from the Government.” Myanmar today can act as a source of inspiration by showing how governments can be transformed by a renewed commitment to human rights. Several w

NTDTV : June 19, 2013 Thousands of Rohingyas flee from Myanmar each year on rickety boats seeking refuge and jobs in Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia, but the number has swelled since unrest last year.  After independence in 1948, Myanmar's new rulers tried to limit citizenship to those whose roots in the country predated British rule.  A 1982 Citizenship Act excluded Rohingya from the country's 135 recognized ethnic groups, denying them citizenship and rendering them stateless.  Bangladesh also disowns them and has refused to grant them refugee status since 1992. The government puts their number at one-point-three-three-million in the country of 60-million people, and say one-point-zero-eight-million are in Rakhine State.  Only about 40-thousand have citizenship. Myanmar's transformation from global pariah to budding democracy once seemed remarkably smooth.  After nearly half a century of military dictatorship, the quasi-civilian gover

The man accused of raping a Rohingya woman being sheltered in Thailand Photo by phuketwan.com By Chutima Sidasathian and Alan Morison Phuket_Wan June 18, 2013 PHUKET: A man confessed tonight to raping a Rohingya woman who escaped from a shelter north of Phuket with the intention of taking her two children to join her husband in Malaysia.  Instead, the woman became embroiled in the local people trafficking network that highlights just what a person is worth and how kin will abuse each other for money.  Most of the women and children who have absconded from shelters in Phang Nga and on Phuket have gone over the wall with the intention of joining family in Malaysia. The case of Mrs X, as we shall call her, shows how difficult it is to know who to trust and how the arrival of more and more Rohingya along Thailand's coast has corrupted some local police and made some local traffickers rich.  Often, the traffickers have turned out to be people that the Rohi

Development Minister Alan Duncan meets Aung San Suu Kyi. Picture: Tim Mitzman www.gov.uk   June 18, 2013 Press release UK humanitarian support is making a difference in Burma but more needs to be done by the international community Greater efforts must be made to help vulnerable people at risk from flooding and disease in Burma’s Rakhine and Kachin States and support peace talks to resolve Burma’s inter-communal conflicts, Development Minister Alan Duncan has said on a visit to Burma. In Burma, Alan Duncan met senior ministers in the Burmese government, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, ethnic leaders and civil society groups to discuss how the UK can help to support peace talks to resolve Burma’s inter-communal conflicts and help with the country’s continued development. During a visit to Rakhine, one year on from the start of violence that has seen 140,000 mostly Rohingya Muslims displaced from their homes, the minister saw how British support has already helped

Photo refugee  observation  28th     December 2008 Darkness Day kutupalong camp. Irrawaddy News: June 19 2013 Bangladesh says it has reached an agreement with Burma to resume a stalled voluntary repatriation program for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, The Myanmar Times reports. It quotes Bangladesh Foreign Secretary Mohammad Shahidul Haque as saying, “We have encouraged the Myanmar government to restart the process. They have agreed and are looking for an appropriate time to restart the process.” The countries have long disagreed on how to resolve the situation of the tens of thousands of refugees — who fled during periods of repression in Burma — and it remains to be seen if the reported agreement will bear results.

At the Myanmar Muslims Genocide Awareness Convention at the Veterans Memorial Complex Auditorium, Culver City, CA, on June 9th, 2013. Photo by the author. By  dannyfisher Pathoes.com June 17, 2013 Two weekends ago, I had the pleasure of attending the  Myanmar Muslims Genocide Awareness Convention  in Culver City, CA. I went because I felt it was important to put my presence where my mouth was: as I’ve indicated here at this blog,  the situation in Burma  has been incredibly distressing to me, and rather than simply talk about it, I want to be more involved in helping in any small way that I can to get it resolved. I’ve certainly tried to be involved, at least from my desk. My friend Joshua Eaton and I collaborated last year on an open letter from Buddhist teachers and scholars and others on Islamophobia that you can read at  buddhistletteronislamophobia.wordpress.com . (Joshua authored the letter — though a few of us offered little tweaks and edits — and I put t

File photo shows Muslim Rohingyas at the Say Thamagyi Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp, located on the outskirts of Sittwe, capital of Myanmar's western Rakhine state.  PressTV: June 18, 2013 A United Nations agency says thousands of people remain displaced in Myanmar a year after extremist Buddhists launched deadly attacks against Rohingya Muslims in the country’s Rakhine State. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Tuesday that some over 140,000 people remain in camps with little hope of returning home. The UN sources noted that the violence has claimed up to 167 lives and destroyed 10,000 buildings in the troubled region. Myanmar Army forces allegedly provided the fanatics with containers of petrol for torching the houses of Muslim villagers, who were then forced to flee. Myanmar’s government has been repeatedly criticized for failing to protect the Muslim minority. International and rights groups accuse My