The Stateless Rohingya Blog

By ROBIN McDOWELL AP News January 25th, 2014 YANGON, Myanmar — The United Nations has confirmed that at least 48 Muslims appear to have been killed when Buddhist mobs attacked a village in an isolated corner of western Myanmar, violence that has been vehemently denied by the government since it was first reported by The Associated Press just over a week ago. Presidential spokesman Ye Htut said he “strongly objects” to the U.N. claims and called its information and figures “totally wrong.” A statement issued Friday by Myanmar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said accounts of the events issued by news organizations and international agencies were “based on unjustified conclusions drawing from unverified information,” and would lead to misunderstandings among ethnic communities in the area. It cautioned journalists and diplomats that “releasing unverified information” was tantamount to interfering in Myanmar’s internal affairs. The United States said it was “dee...

Muslims children eat meals at their temporary refugee camp in Htan Gone village, Kantbalu township, Sagaing division, Myanmar, on Monday.  Khin Maung Win/AP By AssociatedPress September 5, 2013 YANGON, Myanmar — A court has sentenced a Muslim man to seven years in prison for an attempted rape that sparked Buddhist-led riots in a northwestern Myanmar town late last month. Myint Aung, a legal official at the Kantbalu township court, says Hsan Min Oo was found guilty and sentenced Wednesday after a speedy trial. Myint Aung says the defendant confessed to the crime and did not ask for a defense lawyer. The Aug. 24 violence started after a crowd surrounded a police station in Htan Gone village, demanding that Hsan Min Oo be handed over. When officers refused, the crowd rampaged, destroying 40 Muslim-owned shops and businesses and leaving hundreds of people homeless. Eleven Buddhists also were detained, but opposition lawmaker Myint Naing said on...

Photo credit: AP | In this photo taken Sunday, July 21, 2013, Buddhist monks and residents watch police examining a car after an explosion in Mandalay, central Myanmar. A small explosion went off Sunday near a firebrand monk as he was giving a sermon during a Buddhist ceremony, wounding five people, police and witnesses said Monday. (AP Photo) AYE AYE WIN Associated Press July 22, 2013 YANGON, Myanmar - (AP) -- A radical Buddhist monk blamed Muslim extremists Monday for a small bomb that detonated in Myanmar just a few meters (yards) from where he was delivering a sermon, though police said it was too early to speculate. Five people were injured, but only slightly. The blast, which occurred at 9 p.m. Sunday during a religious ceremony on the outskirts of Mandalay, comes as the predominantly Buddhist nation of 60 million struggles to contain religious violence that has claimed more than 250 lives in the last year. Most of the victims have been members of the count...

In this May 18, 2013 photo, Muslim men drink tea and listen to a news bulletin on a radio at Aung Mingalar in Sittwe. (AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe) Associated Press June 30, 2013 SITTWE, Burma — From inside the neighborhood that has become their prison, they can look over the walls and fences and into a living city. Stores are open out there. Sidewalk restaurants are serving bottles of Mandalay beer. There are no barbed-wire roadblocks marking neighborhood boundaries, no armed policemen guarding checkpoints. In the rest of Sittwe, this city of 200,000 people along Burma’s coast, no one pays a bribe to take a sick baby to the doctor. But here it’s different. Aung Mingalar is just a few square blocks. You can walk it in 10 minutes, stopping only when you come to the end of the road — 7/8 any road — and a policeman with an assault rifle waves you back inside, back into a maze of shuttered storefronts, unemployment and boredom. In this Ma...

By AP News April 8, 2013 FORT WAYNE, Ind. (AP) — Members of one of the largest U.S. communities of Burma immigrants held a demonstration Sunday to call attention to sectarian violence targeting Muslims in the Southeast Asian nation. About 100 former Burma residents who resettled in the Fort Wayne area gathered outside the Allen County Courthouse to protest the violence in their homeland, officially known as Myanmar. Ex-refugee AyeMin Zaphun tells WANE-TV the protest was called to spread awareness about the Burma government and extremist Buddhists who are targeting Muslims. Dozens of people were killed last month when violence between Buddhists and minority Muslims shook the central Burma city of Meikhtila. And a pre-dawn fire Tuesday at a religious dormitory at a mosque complex killed 13 children. Authorities blamed the fire on an electrical short circuit, but some Muslims in Burma have said the fire was set intentionally. “We want the world to know t...