The Stateless Rohingya Blog

A man sorts through the wreckage of a burned mosque in Thabuchai village in Thandwe on October 3. (Kaung Htet/The Myanmar Times)A man sorts through the wreckage of a burned mosque in Thabuchai village in Thandwe on October 3. (Kaung Htet/The Myanmar Times) By Cherry Thein Myanmar Times December 09, 2013 Religious conflict has been at the forefront of international discussions about Myanmar ever since violence erupted between Buddhists and Muslims in Rakhine State in June 2012. Attacks on Muslim communities were cited in the US Commission on International Religious Freedom’s 2013 Annual Report as being among the primary reasons that Myanmar continues to be designated by the US State Department as a “country of particular concern” in the area of religious freedom. According to the report, Muslims were not alone in suffering ill treatment based on their religious beliefs. “During the reporting period (January 2012 to January 2013) … serious abuses against mainly

The Royal Thai Navy oversees Rohingya on a beach in 2008. Now, in 2013, dealing with human traffickers appears to provide an easier solution Photo by Royal Thai Navy By Alan Morison and Chutima Sidasathian Phuket Wan  December 7, 2013 In December 2008 , Phuketwan asked the Royal Thai Navy for permission for its journalists to travel on a warship. looking for Rohingya boats. The navy knocked back the request but instead sent some photographs of boatpeople being apprehended and laid out on the Similans and other holiday destinations like so many fish, drying in the sun. That year, at least 5000 boatpeople arrived in Thailand and the navy was doing its duty by apprehending them. We can't say what happened to those thousands of men, or the thousands who had made the journey before them.  In January 2009 we became curious again and went looking ourselves for what we could discover about the boatpeople. What we found was a nightmare. The boatpeople were being arreste