The Stateless Rohingya Blog

Police arrive in Mingalar-zayyon Ward, Meikhtila, as houses in the city burn on March 21, 2013. (Photo: RFA) By Rachel Vandenbrink Radio Free Asia April 25, 2014 Any resolution to the religious violence threatening Myanmar’s nascent reforms must come from within the country, according to experts who notice some Buddhist monks already confronting anti-Muslim rhetoric spread by extremist groups.  Although foreign governments and NGOs—as well as the broader international community—want an end to the problem, they can only play a supporting role in addressing the tensions without having their efforts backfire, the experts said this week at a Washington conference on ethnic and religious tolerance in Myanmar. They warned that the communal tensions between the country’s majority Buddhists and minority Muslims will have to be closely watched ahead of the release of results from a national census fraught with ethnic controversy due in July and political parties gear...

Enumerators collect census data in Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin state, in April 2014. (Photo: RFA) By Radio Free Asia  April 10, 2014 Myanmar's first census in three decades, which was scheduled to end Thursday, has been extended to at least the end of the month to cover those who could not participate in the 12-day natio nwide exercise, a senior official said.  The exercise, which began on March 30, had covered about 10 million of the country’s estimated 11 million households as of Tuesday, according to Myanmar's Director of the Population Department Khaing Khaing Soe.  Those who could not meet census takers during the exercise would have to provide their personal data to administrative offices closest to them or to a hotline that had been set up until the end of the month, she said.  "They have to go and provide their data to the closest local administration office. We have already informed village and township census committees about...

Rohingya children prepare a meal at a camp for internally displaced people on the outskirts of Sittwe, May 17, 2013. Photo AFP Radio Free Asia: July 12, 2013 Myanmar will only consider providing citizenship to Muslim Rohingyas who meet certain “legal requirements” the government said Friday in response to a call from U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon to address the grievances of the stateless ethnic minority. Myanmar’s deputy minister Ye Htut said that the Rohingyas, who rights groups say bore the brunt of two waves of deadly communal violence that rocked Rakhine state last year, would be granted citizenship based on the country’s decades-old citizenship law. Around 800,000 Muslim Rohingyas live in Rakhine state but most of them, according to rights groups, have been denied citizenship as they are considered by most in Myanmar and the government to be illegal immigrants. Most people in Myanmar call the Rohingyas “Bengali,” indicating that they have illegally immigrated fr...

Source Radio Free Asia: February 13, 2013 The special rapporteur on human rights travels to Burma to investigate camps for the displaced in Rakhine and Kachin states. AFP U.N. Human Rights envoy Tomas Ojea Quintana talks to journalists at the Rangoon international airport, Aug. 4, 2012 A U.N. human rights envoy on Monday visited refugee camps in Burma’s restive Rakhine state, where nearly 200 people were killed in communal violence last year, as part of a fact-finding mission on ethnic conflict in the country. Tomas Ojea Quintana, who is on his seventh trip to Burma as the U.N. Special Rapporteur monitoring the rights situation in Burma, spent time speaking with refugees at camps in Myay Pone township near the state capital Sittwe.  He was accompanied by U.N. Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Burma Ashok Nigam. Thousands remain homeless in the region following clashes between ethnic Buddhist Rakhines and Rohingya communities in June and October la...

Radio Free Asia February 05, 2013 A UN official urges the Burmese government to allow assistance to tens of thousands of people displaced by violence. AFP Vijay Nambiar (L) gives money to a Kachin family at a refugee camp in Myitkyina, Feb. 5, 2013. The U.N.’s special advisor on Burma on Tuesday visited refugee camps in Kachin state that had previously been closed to international aid groups, pledging to work with the Burmese government to deliver aid to those displaced by clashes between rebels and government troops. Vijay Nambiar, the U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Advisor on Burma, visited the camps in the capital Myitkyina and nearby Waimaw together with Burmese Immigration Minister Khin Ye, government-appointed peace negotiator Aung Min and presidential advisor Soe Thein. They met with several nongovernmental organizations and residents of Myitkyina later that day. The visit marks the first by a U.N. official to observe the refugee situation in Kachin state, whe...