The Stateless Rohingya Blog

Nobel Peace Prize laureates the Dalai Lama and Aung San Suu Kyi pictured during their meeting in Prague, Czech Republic, on September 15, 2013. (PHOTO: Jeremy Russell/ OHHDL) By Naharnet Newsdesk AFP News September 17 , 2013 The Dalai Lama on Tuesday urged Myanmar monks to act according to their Buddhist principles, in a plea to end the deadly violence against the country's Muslim minority. "Those Burmese monks please, when they develop some kind of anger towards Muslim brothers and sisters, please, remember the Buddhist faith," the Buddhist leader told reporters at an annual human rights conference in the Czech capital Prague. "I am sure (...) that would protect those Muslim brothers and sisters who are becoming victims," Tibet's exiled spiritual leader said. Sectarian clashes in Myanmar's western state of Rakhine last year left around 200 people dead -- mostly Rohingya Muslims who are denied citizenship -- and 140,000 others homeless

A patient is checked by a nurse at the Muslim Free Hospital in Yangon on May 31, 2013. (AFP/File) By AFP  September 16, 2013 YANGON (AFP) –  From political activists freed after years in Myanmar's jails to stricken and impoverished families, all are welcome at Yangon's Muslim Free Hospital -- a symbol of unity in a country riven by religious unrest. There is barely a space left unoccupied in the bustling medical centre. From the soot-smeared front steps, through dusty stairwells and into sweltering wards, people wait for treatments that would be beyond their reach elsewhere in Myanmar's desperately underfunded health system. The throngs of people -- the hospital sees up to 500 outpatients a day -- are a testament to the diversity of the Buddhist-majority country's main city, with flashes of colour from Myanmar skirt-like longyis and Muslim headscarves. "I am a surgeon so my responsibility is to cure suffering patients," Tin Myo Win sai

Phay Ruscome missed more than a year of school ( Photo: David Swanson/IRIN ) IRIN News September 17 2013 SITTWE, 17 September 2013 (IRIN) - After an absence of more than a year, Phay Ruscome could not wait to get back in the classroom.  "I like learning, and I missed my friends," the nine-year-old said. "I wasn't able to attend at all last year."  Phay is one of hundreds of primary school-aged children now receiving emergency education at the Thea Chaung internally displaced persons (IDPs) camp, home to more than 10,000 Muslim Rohingyas, outside Sittwe, the provincial capital of Myanmar's western Rakhine State.     The community-led initiative - providing two-and-a-half hours of Burmese and mathematics a day- highlights the unmet needs of thousands of IDP children unable to attend regular school more than a year after  sectarian clashes between Rohingyas and Buddhist ethnic Rakhine residents in 2012.     "It's di