The Stateless Rohingya Blog

People try to calm down Ahmed's mother at a mosque, where the body of her young son lies. By Zigor Aldama Al Jazeera February 04, 2014  Displaced Rohingya Muslims struggle with persecution and Buddhist resentment. Sittwe, Myanmar -  A checkpoint guarded by three bored-looking policemen in the middle of a narrow road separates two very different worlds. On one side in Sittwe, capital of Myanmar's western state of Rakhine, people lead a common life: They're free to go wherever they please, marry whomever they want, and to attend religious ceremonies in their Buddhist temple of choice. Behind barbed wire on the other side, nearly 150,000 people are crowded into a dozen or so camps for internally displaced people. They are the Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic group not recognised among the 134 official ethnicities of the country, and considered by the  United Nations  as one of the most persecuted minorities in the world. They can't leave the camps

By Tun Khin  Huffington Post February 04, 2014  Following the violent attacks against the Rohingya of Burma in June and October 2012, where hundreds were killed and more than 140,000 forced to flee their homes, no-one doubted that more attacks would take place. It was just a question of where and when. Now we have the answer. The where was Du Chee Yar Tan village, the when was 14th January. Estimate of the dead vary from seventy to ninety. The United Nations has confirmed at least 48 killed. The government of Burma has denied anything happened, except the killing of one policeman. Trying to piece together exact details of what happened has not been easy. The remoteness of the area, lack of ways for local people to communicate, threats to local people not to reveal information, and the government ban on people visiting the area, mean that establishing facts is very difficult. My organization, the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK has received direct and indirect info

MYARF Report | Written by M.S. Anwar 3rd February 2014 Rvisiontv.com Maungdaw, Arakan: Police at the HinThaRa (Hossara) Bridge Checkpost of Zawmadat (Lambaaguna) village tract, southern Maungdaw, raped two Rohingya minor girls at their gun-points around 3PM on 28th January 2014. Both girls are from the village of HinThaRa of Zawmadat village tract. “Around 3PM on 28th January 2014, two girls from the village of Hossara (HinThaRa) went to their farmlands to pluck vegetables. Their farmlands are not so far from the police checkpost of Hossara Bridge. A few Policemen went there and raped the two girls at their gun-points. The particulars of the girls are: 1) T*s**n (daughter of) Y*s*n (Age 16) (the detailed form of the name is witheld for privacy’s sake.) 2) S*f**r* (daughter of) Y*n*s* (Age 15) (the detailed form of the name is witheld for privacy’s sake.)” said a local elder from a nearby village. Rapes of girls/women of Rohingya and other minorities by Mya

USDP Lower House member Shwe Maung. (Photo: Twitter/Shwe Maung) By  Paul Vrieze & Htet  Naing Zaw Irrawaddy News February 04, 2014 RANGOON — Shwe Maung, a ruling party parliamentarian representing the Rohingya majority township of Buthidaung in strife-torn Arakan State, said he was called in for questioning on Tuesday by the Home Affairs Ministry on allegations of defaming the Burmese police force and state. He said he was being interrogated because of recent comments he gave to news agency Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), in which he suggested that police could have been responsible for the burning of 16 homes in Du Char Yar Tan village in Maungdaw Township on Jan. 28. The village is the site of the  alleged killing  of possibly dozens of Rohingya Muslims earlier last month. Shwe Maung, a Lower House MP of the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), said Union Parliament Speaker Shwe Mann had received a letter from President Thein Sein “requesting permissio