The Stateless Rohingya Blog

The Hindu News: June 30, 2013 Hundreds of Rohingya Muslims who came to the city escaping persecution in their native Burma, continue to face bad times. With knowledge of neither Urdu nor Telugu, they lose out on jobs here They came all the way to Hyderabad to escape persecution back home and for a better livelihood. But a year later, most of them have failed to land jobs. Reason: they couldn’t pick up local languages. Hundreds of Rohingya Muslims who came to the city in hope of better days continue to face bad times as job opportunities elude them as they do not know either Urdu or Telugu. Rohingyas from different provinces of Myanmar entered India sometime ago to escape violence in that country. Many of them live in small tenements in Hafeezbabanagar, Pahadeshareef, Balapur, Mir Momim Pahadi and Kishanbagh. Abdul Mabud, 24, who hails from Maungdaw in Myanmar, owned a shop in his hometown until he crossed over to India to escape clashes in his country

In this May 18, 2013 photo, Muslim men drink tea and listen to a news bulletin on a radio at Aung Mingalar in Sittwe. (AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe) Associated Press June 30, 2013 SITTWE, Burma — From inside the neighborhood that has become their prison, they can look over the walls and fences and into a living city. Stores are open out there. Sidewalk restaurants are serving bottles of Mandalay beer. There are no barbed-wire roadblocks marking neighborhood boundaries, no armed policemen guarding checkpoints. In the rest of Sittwe, this city of 200,000 people along Burma’s coast, no one pays a bribe to take a sick baby to the doctor. But here it’s different. Aung Mingalar is just a few square blocks. You can walk it in 10 minutes, stopping only when you come to the end of the road — 7/8 any road — and a policeman with an assault rifle waves you back inside, back into a maze of shuttered storefronts, unemployment and boredom. In this Ma

Bernama June 30, 2013 KUALA LUMPUR -- Malaysia has urged the Myanmar government to take immediate action to address the ongoing inter-communal violence in the country. This was voiced by Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Anifah Aman in a bilateral meeting with Myanmar's Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin on the sideline of the 46th Asean Foreign Ministers Meeting (AMM) in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei which commenced yesterday. A statement from the Asean-Malaysia National Secretariat, Foreign Affairs Ministry here said Anifah conveyed Malaysia's concerned on the ongoing violence, saying it had also affected neighbouring countries, including Malaysia. He also urged the Myanmar government to take necessary measures to bring the perpetrators of violence to justice in a fair and transparent manner. The minister had also sought the agreement of the Myanmar government to allow the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Contact Group to visit Myanmar and be given fullest cooper

By Dr. Habib Siddiqui In its July 1 issue, the Time magazine has covered the recent genocidal activities against the Muslims of Myanmar. In this, reporter Hannah Beech has done an excellent job analyzing the role played by Wirathu, a Buddhist monk, who has become the face of Buddhist terrorism. Her report has stirred up a hornet’s nest among the Buddhists. They are very upset. Unlike OBL, whose views had forced him to settle for a life of refuge outside the country, Wirathu who likes to call him ‘the Burmese bin Laden’ is quite popular inside Myanmar. He is an abbot who has a significant following not just within the Sangha but also within the government, military, and civilian population of his Buddhist-majority country. Soon after the publication of the Times issue, President Thein Sein came to his defense and said, "Buddhist monks, also known as Sanghas, are noble people who keep the 277 precepts or moral rules, and strive peacefully for the prosperity of Buddhism.

The body of a Rohingya man killed with his hands bound. The body was one of 18 Rohingya corpses, including that of a boy, dumped by police outside Sittwe on June 13. All the bodies showed grievous wounds. Police ordered local residents to bury the bodies in a mass grave that was shown to Human Rights Watch. | Text and photo courtesy of Human Rights Watch Newsdesk.Asia June 30, 2013 The Burmese government is accused of aggravating the abuse committed against Rohingya Muslims in the ongoing violence gripping the minority group and the Buddhist ethnic Rahkine people. Over 70 groups have signed a petition calling on the Burmese government to step in and end the violence that have ‘disproportionately victimized’ the stateless Rohingya Muslims. The groups also challenged Burma to “answer allegations of crimes against humanity being perpetrated by state actors against the Rohingya.” Some officials, they said, are also allegedly “siphoning off humanitarian supplies.” “