The Stateless Rohingya Blog

By  Francis Wade Asian Correspondent February 17, 2014 Next month the Burmese government will begin the country’s first nationwide census since the early 1980s. As preparation for the start date on 30 March gets underway, several groups have highlighted their concerns about how the census could work to further inflame violent nationalism and exclude minority groups. The International Crisis Group  released a strong briefing  last week that covers various important issues associated with the census, focusing in particular upon the requirement to list religion and ethnicity – a real danger at present given the recent violence directed towards the country’s Muslim population, and the Rohingya minority in particular. As the ICG briefing notes, the problems are manifold, and affect all of the country’s ethnic groups (the number of which is contested). It says that minorities will only be allowed to field representatives for local government if their population, a...

A Buddhist monk shows an anti-Rohingya message on his palm. Pic: AP. By  Francis Wade Asian Correspondent January 24, 2014 As more details emerge of the  massacre  on January 13 of at least 40 Rohingya men, women and children in western Burma, the government predictably has gone on the defensive. The UN is now claiming that police in the remote village of Du Chee Yar Tan, northern Arakan state, were among the mob of Arakanese who attacked and killed villagers, allegedly in response to the slaying of a policemen following an earlier bout of violence in January that left at least eight dead. Even though the death toll is likely a conservative one, it stands as the deadliest single incident in Arakan state since October 2012. The first international media outlet to report on the massacre was Associated Press, drawing on eye-witness testimonies collected by The Arakan Project, which for years has maintained an extensive list of sources on the ground in north...

The Buddhist Rakhine consider Muslim Rohingya to be Bengalis and have directed most of the sectarian bloodshed at them, writes Francis Wade [EPA] By  Francis Wade Al Jazeera October 9, 2013 Myanmar's president made his first trip to the violence-hit town of Thandwe last week, days after a  94-year-old Muslim woman was slain by Buddhists  in a nearby village. Spurred on by an unrelated argument between a Muslim political leader and a Buddhist taxi driver two days prior, a mob approached her home in a nearby village on October 1. Her daughter managed to escape, but returned to find a charred house and a mother with cuts to her neck, head and stomach.  The state-run New Light of Myanmar later quoted President Thein Sein as saying that he had suspicions about the nature of the Thandwe attacks, where close to 100 houses were razed. "Ethnic Rakhine [Buddhists] and ethnic Kaman [Muslims] have been living here in peaceful co-existence for many years,” he s...

Francis Wade Foreign Policy April 22, 2013 Buddhist monks have been major instigators of the recent violence against Muslims in Burma. In a small wooden office in the Mahamyaing monastery, Kyaw Linn rifles through a carrier bag of stickers emblazoned with 969, the logo that has come to represent Burma's budding anti-Muslim movement. Six months ago the head monk, Oo Wi Ma La, ordered the first batch of stickers from a nearby printing company. Now they're hard to avoid. Taxis, buses, and shop fronts across Rangoon and other major towns now display what some observers consider a symbol of Buddhist extremism -- a symbol that sees Burma's Muslim community as a threat to the country and its dominant religion. This sentiment has unleashed waves of violence over the past several months that have  left  more than 40 dead, and 13,000 displaced in 2013 alone. The monastery in Moulmein, southern Burma, is credited as the birthplace of the resurgent 969 movement. Prod...