The Stateless Rohingya Blog

By Emanuel Stoakes The Independent UK April 11, 2014 This year looks set to be the most fraught in a long time for the already highly imperilled ethnic group       At the time of writing, Burma’s first census in over 30 years is drawing to a close. It was meant to have been the latest in a series of milestones affirming the nation’s steady progress toward democracy and away from its bitterly troubled past. Instead, it has become a high-profile fiasco; one that has underlined the burning issues that still trouble the country and threaten to drag it backwards. Chief among those issues is the plight of a persecuted Muslim ethnic minority in the country's western Rakhine state. Just prior to the start of the nation-wide population survey, a spokesman for the Burmese government announced that the ethnic group, who are stateless and regarded as illegal immigrants by both Myanmar and neighbouring Bangladesh, could not identify themselves by the name the...

The Independent UK February  27, 2013 By Emanuel Stoakes The international community has been shamefully unresponsive to this crisis The news last week that around a hundred refugees from Burma had slowly starved to death after 25 days at sea may have shocked those unfamiliar with the current state of affairs in Asia’s newest ostensible democracy. The harrowing  reports more recently of mass rapes, involving torture, in the country’s western Rakhine state will likely have had a similar impact. But to those who have been keeping up with the daily reports of intimidation, harassment and violence directed at ethnic minorities in Burma news of these latest horrors was heartbreaking, but unsurprising. It was likewise grimly un-startling to read that in both cases the victims were from the most vulnerable of all ethnic groups in the country, the imperiled and desperate Rohingya minority. This is because the Rohingya are perhaps Asia’s most vulnerable r...