The Stateless Rohingya Blog

Rohingya women are pictured at the Thae Chaung camp for internally displaced people in Sittwe, Arakan State, on April 22, 2014. (Photo: Reuters) By Lawi Weng The Irrawaddy August 22, 2014 RANGOON — Buddhist Arakanese leaders are considering a proposal that would see Rohingya Muslims without documentation proving their right to citizenship detained in camps. The plan will be discussed publicly in the Arakan State capital, Sittwe, in the coming days, said Than Tun, an Arakanese leader and a member of the state’s Emergency Coordination Committee, and comes as a citizenship verification project is restarted for Muslims in Arakan State. Clashes between ethnic Arakanese and Rohingya broke out in mid-2012 and about 140,000 people, mostly Muslims, still live in temporary camps after fleeing their homes. Arakanese Buddhists see the Rohingya, who are not a recognized ethnic group under Burmese law, as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and refer to them as Bengalis. T...

A 25-year-old Rohingya Muslim sits in front of her hut at a camp outside Sittwe. (Photo: Reuters) By Lawi Weng The Irrawaddy  July 16, 2014 RANGOON — The newly appointed chief minister of Burma’s conflict-torn Arakan State appears to be struggling to win the trust of Rohingya Muslims, who continue to live in squalid camps after being driven from their homes in rioting two years ago. Chief Minister Maung Maung Ohn, who is also a general in the armed forces, has met four times with Rohingya community leaders since he was appointed last month. But in that time, he has been unable to convince the Rohingyas to participate in the government’s controversial “citizenship verification” scheme, according to state government spokesman Win Myaing. “They are refusing to cooperate,” the spokesman told The Irrawaddy on Wednesday. The Arakan State government implemented a pilot project in Myebon Township last month to determine who will qualify to become a naturalized ...

Rohingya women are pictured at a schoolhouse outside of Sittwe in May 2013. (Photo: JPaing / The Irrawaddy) By Lawi Weng The Irrawaddy March 25, 2014 RANGOON — The Arakan State government has asked Muslim leaders in Sittwe to urge their fellow followers of Islam not to identify their “race” in Burma’s upcoming census, with authorities worried that allowing Rohingya Muslims to self-identify as such could spark a violent backlash from Buddhists in the troubled region. State authorities including police Col. Tun Oo met Muslim community leaders on Tuesday morning and told them that the request was intended to defuse tensions in the state, which has seen protests by Arakanese Buddhists against the census in recent weeks that continued in Sittwe on Tuesday. The census, Burma’s first in more than 30 years, will officially begin next week. The protestors oppose the UN-backed census because it allows Rohingya to identify themselves as they wish, conferring legitimacy on a...

A session of Union Parliament in Burma’s capital, Naypyidaw. (Photo: The Irrawaddy) By  Lawi Weng The Irrawaddy  March 20,  2014 RANGOON — Burma’s Upper House on Thursday passed an amendment to a clause in the Constitution, removing the right of temporary citizenship card holders to form parties. The decision could further reduce the rights of stateless Rohingya minority in Arakan State, many of who only hold such cards. The proposed amendment could also pose a problem for political dissidents who lack citizenship cards because they lived abroad for decades under the former military regime and are now returning to Burma during the democratic transition. During a session Thursday, Upper House MPs did not object to the amendment put forth by the Arakan National Party (ANP), a proposal first suggested by ANP in August last year. The amendment will now have to be approved by the Lower House. ANP Chairman Aye Maung, whose party represents the Buddhi...

U Wirathu is received by the Arakanese community in Ponnagyun Township last week. (Photo: virathu.com) By Lawi Weng The Irrawaddy March 17, 2014 RANGOON — Nationalist Buddhist monk U Wirathu visited strife-torn Arakan State and joined large protests against the upcoming census over the weekend. Local Arakanese Buddhists oppose the census because it will allow the stateless Rohingya minority to register their ethnic identity as they wish. On Sunday, protests against the UN-supported census where held in nine townships in Arakan State. U Wirathu, who heads the controversial 969 movement, which is accused of spreading hate speech against Muslims, told The Irrawaddy he participated in order to voice support for the protests. “I joined the protest in Myebon [Township] and encouraged protesters because there is no such Rohingya name in our country,” he claimed. “But they are trying to create and have this this name—it is not fair.” Arakanese politicians and many ...

Burma President Thein Sein delivers a speech in Naypyidaw in April 2011. (Photo: The Irrawaddy) By Lawi Weng The Irrawaddy March 7, 2014 RANGOON — Burma President Thein Sein has ordered a new commission and the country’s highest court to draft a proposed so-called “protection of race and religion” law, which could include a controversial measure to restrict interfaith marriage, according to lawmakers. A petition signed by about 1.3 million people has called for the president to pass into law a version of a bill drafted by lawyers on behalf of leading monks in the nationalist 969 movement. If enacted without amendment, the bill—which is thought to be targeted at Muslims in Burma—would require Buddhist women to get permission from their parents and local government officials before marrying a man from another faith. It also includes restrictions on converting to another religion, a limit to the number of children people can have, and measures to stop polygamy—which is alread...

A woman from the Rohingya Muslim village of Du Chee Yar Tan, in Maungdaw Township, shows reporters a damaged house. (Photo: Sanay Lin / The Irrawaddy) By   Lawi Weng & Sanay Lin Irrawaddy News February 11, 2014 DU CHEE YAR TAN, Maungdaw Township — Zuu Lar Har is living in deep distress as she has been waiting more than three weeks for her 18-year-old daughter Zuu Kai to turn up. The 60-year-old Muslim resident of Du Chee Yar Tan village in Maungdaw Township, Arakan State, said she feared for the life of Zuu Kai after she disappeared during the tumultuous events of Jan. 13, when, according to accounts of local villagers, an Arakanese Buddhist mob violently raided the village. Zuu Lar Har said her daughter had been sick and bed-ridden when the alleged attack took place, and as the Muslim villagers fled Zuu Kai went missing. “I thought my daughter had come along with the family, but later I found she hadn’t,” Zuu Lar Har said. “I do not know whether sh...

Young Rohingya girls stay at a primary school several kilometers outside of Sittwe, where hundreds of Rohingyas took shelter from a storm in May. (Photo: JPaing / The Irrawaddy) By Lawi Weng The Irrawaddy   January 13, 2014 RANGOON — Hundreds of Rohingya university students in Arakan State have been prevented from continuing higher education pursuits, with authorities saying their safety cannot be guaranteed more than a year after communal violence tore through the region. Universities in several Arakan townships were shuttered to all students in the immediate aftermath of the 2012 violence, but while Rohingya Muslims say their education has been put on indefinite hold, their Buddhist counterparts have since been allowed to continue their studies and some have gone on to graduate. Rohingya students from Sittwe and Buthidaung townships told The Irrawaddy on Monday that state authorities claimed that they could not provide security to Rohingya seeking to r...

Kyaw Min, chairman of the Democracy and Human Rights Party (DHRP), speaks at a press conference on Friday in Rangoon. (Photo: JPaing / The Irrawaddy) By Lawi Weng  The Irrawaddy January 10, 2014 RANGOON — Two Muslim political parties in Rangoon have asked the Burmese government to recognize their religious kin in western Burma’s Arakan State as Rohingya, a minority group that is currently denied citizenship, as the country gears up for a nationwide census later this year. The two parties, the National Democratic Party for Development (NDPD) and the Democracy and Human Rights Party (DHRP), held a press conference on Friday in Rangoon, where leaders of the two parties told journalists that they would ask the government to recognize their Muslim constituents in Arakan State as Rohingya. They will seek the option to tick Rohingya among the list of ethnic groups that takers of the census will be asked to identify as. The press conference came following a meeting...

Burmese soldiers march during ceremonies on March 27, 2010, marking the 65th anniversary Armed Forces Day in Naypyidaw. Soldiers from the Burma Army have been accused of sexual violence in the country’s border areas. (Photo: The Associated Press) By Lawi Weng The Irrawaddy January 8, 2014 RANGOON — The Burmese military has launched an investigation into allegations that a soldier raped a 13-year-old girl in the country’s southeast, amid continued reports by civilians that sexual abuse by armed forces remains a dire problem despite political reforms. A soldier from the Burma Army’s Infantry Battalion 31 has been accused of raping the girl at her home in Kawzar sub-township, Mon State, while her parents were away. He was reportedly visiting the house to pick up dry vegetation to build thatched roofs for his battalion’s housing. The girl was discovered by a community leader, who brought her to a local hospital. “The girl told me that her hands were tied and she was ...