The Stateless Rohingya Blog

Maungdaw Photo  KPN News: July 26, 2013 Maungdaw, Arakan State: The police personnel from Maungdaw are behaving as goon in Maungdaw since the police force was replacing for Burma border security force (Nasaka), said a village admin officer from Maungdaw. “Police personnel – stationed in front of Myoma monastery (old Muslim religious center –Marcus) – beat rickshaw pullers who passed them with any reason on July 24.” The rickshaw pullers complained to concern community leaders and village admin officer and organized to make counter attacked the police personnel, but the community leader said they will handle the problem, said an elder from Myoma Khayoundan village. “Rohingya community leaders and village admin official complained to the army security post in high school and the army officer called district police officer where the army officer asked to pull out the police personnel from Myoma monastery.” Most the rickshaw pullers are Rohingya community in Maungdaw a

Wirathu, Buddhism’s new face The Economist  ‎ July 27, 2013 Fears of a new religious strife   Fuelled by a dangerous brew of faith, ethnicity and politics, a tit-for-tat conflict is escalating between two of Asia’s biggest religions   THE total segregation of Buddhist Arakanese from Muslim Rohingyas is now a fact of life in the western Myanmar port-city of Sittwe. Until June last year both communities lived side by side in the capital of Rakhine state, but following several rounds of frenzied violence, the Buddhist majority emptied the city of its Muslim population. The Rohingya victims now scrape by in squalid refugee camps beyond the city boundaries. The best that most of them can hope for is to escape on an overloaded fishing boat to Malaysia. Many of them die trying.   The animosity between the Rohingya and the local Arakanese in this remote corner of Myanmar is a consequence of colonial and pre-colonial patterns of settlement. It is an old and very local

By U Kyaw Min RB News July 27, 2013 So purported high birth rate and infiltration of Bengalis into Myanmar’s Rakhine State are popular topics among the Rohingyas’s adversaries. These are not correct assessment, but illusion. There, in Myanmar side, police, military, paramilitary (Hlun Htinn), immigration and NaSaKa (border immigration special task force) are heavily stationed. NaSaKa forces have tight grasp on the population (Rohingya) of north Arakan. They have been on patrolling duty in every village day and night for the last twenty years.  Again there are six monthly checking of family members and house hold animals. Legal and administrative actions are taken for any discrepancy on records. Guests cannot stay for the night without reporting to the local authority. Further there are double fences of barbed wire along the whole border. In this situation, how can a Bengali enter into Myanmar? For a native Rohingya who for some unavoidable reasons crossed the border i

U Kyaw Hla Aung, 73, an activist/lawyer (photo/IRIN) By  Frontline Defenders    July 25, 2013 On 31 July 2013, human rights defender and community leader Mr Kyaw Hla Aung will appear at the district court in Sittwe to hear charges against him. Kyaw Hla Aung is a human rights defender and community leader who has been working to promote and defend the rights of minority Rohingyas in Arakan state. The human rights defender is a respected community leader having served as a Sittwe district civil court clerk and a former staff member of Medicine Sans Frontiers. On 15 July, Kyaw Hla Aung was arrested by police at his home in Thet Kae Pyin in Sittwe and has been arbitrarily detained without charge at the Police Station 1 in Sittwe since then. The human rights defender is currently being held for questioning and does not have access to his family members and his lawyer. The arrest was reportedly related to the “population verification exercise” which was conducted on 26 A

KPN News July 26, 2013 Maungdaw, Arakan State:  Hluntin (riot police) extorted Kyat 50,000 from a Rohingya villager on July 23, over the allegation from that he had married without permission from the concerned authority, according to a police aide who denied to be named. “The victim is identified as Nurul Amin (33), son of Abu Mosa, hailed from Ngakura, Maungdaw north.” The victim was arrested by Hluntin in the morning from his house and brought to the camp and detained there. However, in the evening, he was released after taking Kyat 50,000 from him. After dissolving the Burma border security force (Nasaka) recently, most of the people believe that there will be less harassment against the Rohingya community. But policemen and Para police (Hluntin) are arbitrary arresting and harassing the Rohingya people as Nasaka did before, said a local villager on condition of anonymity. Former Nasaka be made of— army, police, immigration, custom, Hluntin and Sarapa (Mi

A Rohingya boy at an IDP outside Sittwe. More than 140,000 people were displaced following sectarian violence in Myanmar's western Rakhine State  © Contributor/IRIN  IRINnews July 26, 2013 BANGKOK , 26 July 2013 (IRIN) - Thousands of Rohingyas from Myanmar are fleeing persecution to countries elsewhere in the region, underscoring the need for a stronger regional solution, activists and experts say.  "A coordinated and immediate regional response will put pressure on the government to do more to ease the plight of the Rohingya people and prevent the situation from spiralling out of control," Joey Dimaandal, a programme associate for the  South East Asia Committee for Advocacy  (SEACA), a capacity building network for community-based organizations in Southeast Asia, told IRIN.  More than 35,000 people have fled by boat over the past year, recent  estimates suggest, while others believe the real number is much higher.  "The numbers are much more,

(Photo: DVB) Aye Nai  DVB News  July 26, 2013 The defence attorney providing legal counsel to a group of Rohingya in Arakan state’s Sittwe claims the general-secretary of the Rakine Nationalities Development Party (RNDP) has threatened him for representing members from the Muslim minority. Hla Myo Myint, who is representing seven Rohingya facing multiple charges including rioting and disturbing government officials after they refused to register as “Bengalis” at a displacement camp near the state capital, said the RNDP’s Khine Pyi Soe and a group of men first approached him when he was leaving the Sittwe courthouse on 12 July. According to the lawyer, the posse allegedly surrounded him as he was leaving the court and proceeded to follow him to his hotel after he fled the scene in a UN vehicle. At the hotel, the group then threatened Hla Myo Myint and tried to get the hotel staff to kick him out of the establishment. “We were surrounded by the RNDP’s Khine Pyi Soe an