The Stateless Rohingya Blog

B y  Mabrur Ahmed   Restless Beings March 01, 2014 Leaked government documents and images emerged late last night outlining plans to further unsettle the Rohingya population in Arakan, Myanmar. Minutes from a high-level meeting between Than Shwe, the brutal ex-leader of military Burma, and other senior officials detail plans to remove INGO's, instigate further attacks on Rohingya villages during March and April and to target Rohingya leaders in September.  The documents were leaked shortly after Medécins Sans Frontières' (MSF) license to operate in Arakan was revoked by Naypitaw government administration on February 26th. The decision was made as MSF's staff witnessed violence towards Rohingya in the Killa Dong village massacre last month.  MSF staff also treated injured Rohingya villagers which unsettled the Naypitaw administration's stance on foreign NGO's working in Arakan state.  The leaked documents cite that UN and INGO presence i

By Dr. Habib Siddiqui March 1, 2014 Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), the Nobel Prize-winning charity group also known as Doctors Without Borders, have been operating in Burma (Myanmar) since 1992 under an MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) with the Ministry of Health. The group has been giving health care to both ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims, a stateless minority who live in apartheid-like conditions and who otherwise have little access to healthcare. The internationally acclaimed group has also been providing healthcare in Kachin and Shan states, as well as programs across the country offering antiretroviral treatment to around 30,000 HIV patients. Since 2004, MSF has treated over 1,240,000 malaria patients in Rakhine state alone.  The stateless Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar are portrayed deliberately as Bangladeshis to deny them basic human rights and justify a genocidal campaign within this Buddhist country. As a result of a series of ethnic cleansing drives