The Stateless Rohingya Blog

Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron greets the President of Myanmar Thein Sein in Downing Street, central London on July 15, 2013. By Mark Farmaner Huffington Post Director at Burma Campaign UK. It's a scenario used in endless Hollywood romantic comedies, and many of us will have had a friend in the same situation. Girl meets boy, or boy meets girl, falls hopelessly in love‎, but the friends say he/she isn't what they pretend to be, and don't approve. The friends get ignored, but their new love can't keep up the charade for ever, and their true nature starts to reveal itself. The girl/boy tries to convince themselves nothing is wrong, and put on a brave face to their friends, but deep inside, the doubts creep in. ‎This is pretty much the stage the British government has reached with President Thein Sein of Burma. Make no mistake, they are still doe-eyed, but deep inside, there are doubts, especially following events of the past four months. Pol...

By Tun Khin Huffington Post May 5, 2014 Last week the London School ofEconomics hosted a conference on the Rohingya, with academics, legal experts and human rights advocates from all over the world attending. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in Burma also addressed the conference. What might surprise some is the main subject which dominated the conference, whether genocide was about to happen, or whether it had already started. It is a sign of just how bad things have got since the latest waves of attacks began in 2012 that this is the issue now being discussed. Legal experts, academics, and NGOs working in Burma identified key elements of genocide which are taking place there. These included denying Rohingya legal existence and right to nationality; access to medicine, food, and other basic necessities to sustain life; policies of extensive structures of discrimination, and allowing and facilitating hatred and popular violence against the Roh...

President, United to End Genocide By Tom Andrews Huffington Post April 2, 2014 Deteriorating conditions have put Burma on a downward trajectory that could end in the world’s next genocide without immediate action. Yet, while the death toll mounts in Burma, its business as usual for the U.S. government. Today Defense Secretary Hagel is hosting the Defense Minister of Burma among others to discuss the Obama administration’s commitment to “peace and security” in the region. But there is no peace and security for the ethnic minorities in Burma. The government of Burma continues to allow violent attacks on the Muslim ethnic minority Rohingya in Rakhine State while expelling aid groups from the area including Doctors Without Borders. The mass atrocities that have already occurred threaten now to produce the world’s next genocide  without immediate action by the United States. Burma has one of the largest armies in the world. It is also one of the most brutal. Not on...

Rakhine Racists gathering nearby Nazi village to set fire and kill Rohingya people with handmade weapon ( Photo 2012)  By Dr Azeem Ibrahim Huffington Post February 26, 2014 The United Nations Organization is often dismissed as an ineffectual body, unable to follow up on its de clarations with effective action. But in a recent welcome move, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay has urged world powers to refer North Korea to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) following a U.N. report documenting crimes against humanity. The US State Department acknowledged its "deep concern about the human rights situation" in North Korea following the report's "compelling evidence of widespread and systematic human rights violations." Now it is time the UN took similar action on Burma, where the rights situation is among the world's worst, with the Rohingya people being systematically persecuted by a government c...

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 indi...

By   Engy Abdelkader Huffington Post December 26, 2013 Amid continued communal strife in Myanmar, Muslim women and children are increasingly finding themselves in vulnerable situations that have yet to be adequately recognized and addressed. This post glimpses the related issue of human trafficking. By way of background, Burma's record on human trafficking has prompted the United States to place it on a Tier 2 Watch List for the past two years. The Watch List is reserved for countries that fail to comply with minimum standards -- from preventing trafficking to investigating and prosecuting perpetrators of the crime to protecting victims -- as set forth in the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA). In Myanmar, security forces have subjected both Muslim men and women to forced labor. Women, however, have been reportedly forced into prostitution and other forms of slavery as well. In fact, according to a U.S. Department of State 2012  human rights report , B...

By Kyaw Min Chairman of the Democracy and Human Rights Party in Burma. Huffington Post December 19, 2013 By 1990, 15 years before I went to prison, the ruling generals had been in power in Burma for more than 40 years. In those days I was an elected member of the Burmese Parliament. Then in 2005, my family and I were arrested by the police. My wife, son and two daughters and I spent the next seven years in prison. They said our "crime" was declaring our rights as ethnic Rohingya. My jailers told me that speaking up for the Rohingya was giving Myanmar "a bad name" internationally. In 2010, when the military leaders released pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest, I thought Burma was beginning to change for the better. Soon they announced political and economic reforms and they relaxed some restrictions on the press. A human rights commission was set up, under government control. Some foreigners thought these small steps meant tha...

A Muslim woman holds her child in a Muslim quarter of Pa Rein village, Myauk Oo, Myanmar, Oct. 29. (Getty Images) By Engy Abdelkader Huffington Post December 19, 2013 "I wouldn't have to live this life if I wasn't a Muslim." -Anwar Sardad, a 10-year-old child laboring in Myanmar, October 2013 Since largely democratic elections in 2011 ushered in Thein Sein as Myanmar's president, the international community has rewarded perceived political and economic reforms with eased international sanctions, foreign business investments and enhanced public diplomacy initiatives. Most recently, in October 2013, Myanmar was awarded the rotating chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for 2014, in what was widely regarded as a diplomatic prize for its broad strides toward democratic reform. President Thein Sein declared the theme of Burma's incoming chairmanship as, "moving forward in unity in a peaceful and prosperous community...