The Stateless Rohingya Blog

Rohingya in Thailand suffer abuse from human traffickers By  Phuketwan July 11, 2014 PHUKET : Thailand and Burma have agreed to ''facilitate the safe return'' of 130,000 displaced persons to their homeland, General Prayuth Chan-ocha said tonight.  He also said the issue of the Rohingya boatpeople had been discussed with Myanmar's Commander in Chief of Defence Forces, General Min Aung Hlaing, in Bangkok this week.  ''The gist of the meeting is that Thailand and Myanmar (Burma) will cooperate in helping displaced persons from fighting in Myanmar,'' the general said in his weekly national telecast. He took charge of Thailand in a coup on May 22. Details are likely to emerge in the next day or two about precisely what the two countries plan for the large number of refugees from Burma now living in Thailand. ''These people have been staying in temporary shelters with certain restrictions for a long time,''

By Hannah Beech TIME July 10, 2014 Sittwe, a drowsy town in western Burma, is a shattered place. I was first here five years ago, back when ethnic Rakhine Buddhists sold vegetables next to Muslim Rohingya fishermen. At the time, a Buddhist abbot and a Muslim cleric blessed me in whispers, as both spoke out against the repressive junta that had ruled Burma — also known as Myanmar — for nearly half a century. Today, Sittwe, like much of the surrounding state of Rakhine, exists in virtual apartheid. There are no Muslims at the market. Their mosques have been bulldozed, even though one state official in late 2012 told me with a smile that nothing had been destroyed, nothing at all. Did he think I could not see the rubble, with torn pages of children’s prayer books underfoot? Evicted from their homes, more than 140,000 Rohingya now live sequestered behind checkpoints. Diseases fester in these crude camps. In June a top U.N. aid official who traveled to Rakhine said she had ne

By   AFP July 10, 2014 Bangladesh said Thursday it has barred official marriages between its nationals and Myanmar's Rohingya refugees, whom it claims are attempting to wed to gain citizenship. DHAKA: Bangladesh said Thursday it has barred official marriages between its nationals and Myanmar's Rohingya refugees, whom it claims are attempting to wed to gain citizenship. Law minister Syed Anisul Haque said he has ordered marriage registrars not to officiate any unions between Bangladeshi nationals and Rohingya and also between Rohingya themselves, thousands of whom have fled to Bangladesh. He said Rohingya try to use the resulting wedding certificate to gain Bangladeshi passports and other documents, while Rohingya who marry Bangladeshis could automatically qualify for citizenship. "By registering their marriage in Bangladesh they try to prove that they're Bangladeshi citizens," he told AFP. "We've told the marriage registers