The Stateless Rohingya Blog

By KPN News July 12, 2014 Maungdaw, Arakan State :  Burma border guard police –BGP- hurled insult holy Qurans on a bus that plied Ngakura-Maungdaw road on July 7, according to Rakib Ullah from Ngakura village who is going to Maungdaw. The bus plied  Ngakura –Maungdaw-Ngakura everyday with passengers, foods stuff – potato chips, dates, vermicelli and vegetables- and there was no restriction on carrying  goods before even it is from Bangladesh, Thailand or Rangoon, said  Rakib Ullah. There were some Holy Qurans on the bus which were being carried from Ngakura village to Maungdaw Town, but the BGP personnel from main check-post of headquarters kicked, threw, tore and other kinds of insult the Qurans, said an elder from Maungdaw who was on the bus. “In the check-post, there are some new recruits of BGP personnel who are from Maungdaw town, had made all kinds of insult the Quran.” The bus is owned by a Rohingya from Ngakura and it number plate is 4A/440...

Maungdaw, Arakan State : The concerned authority ordered to destroy a mosque accompanied by 14 other houses in Maungdaw south on May 24, according to our correspondent. On that day, at about 12 noon, U Than Htun, an officer of Maungdaw Township administration office (Mayaka) summoned the Khonza bill village Administration officer— Sayed Alam and other village elders to Aley Than Kyaw police station and ordered to destroy a mosque and 14 houses because of renovation. “The officer also said that the order came from high level office”, said one of the participants on condition of anonymity. The authority also targets religious buildings. Though the Burma claim itself as religious freedom country, but not for Rohingya community, said a Rohingya youth Jalil from the Maungdaw south. Some owners of the  houses have been identified as— Ms Azida (35), wife of Abdul Hanan; Abdullah (30), son of Dawat; Abdu Sukkur (30), son of Abul Hakim; Abdullah (45), son of Mohamed; Sayed ...

By Charlie Campbell Time March 27, 2014 Proposed discriminatory laws are the latest escalation in persecution of Muslims and a political ploy to secure Buddhist votes ahead of polls in 2015 Last March, sectarian riots roiled Central Burma and at least 48 people, mainly Muslims, were slaughtered by machete-wielding thugs. Buddhist monks spurred on frenzied mobs in an orgy of bloodshed that will be forever indelible in the minds of the Southeast Asian nation’s Muslim minority. The violence spread to a further 11 townships. One year on, thousands remain homeless and animosity is entrenched. “It is not stable and conditions are still very dangerous,” says Aung Thein, a 51-year-old Muslim lawyer in Meiktila, a central Burmese town of 100,000 people, where at least five mosques and more than 800 homes were razed to the ground. “Extremists use hate speech every day and Muslims are not safe.” Adding to this already fraught picture, new legislation threatens to isolate the ...

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...

By Dr. Habib Siddiqui March 1, 2014 Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), the Nobel Prize-winning charity group also known as Doctors Without Borders, have been operating in Burma (Myanmar) since 1992 under an MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) with the Ministry of Health. The group has been giving health care to both ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims, a stateless minority who live in apartheid-like conditions and who otherwise have little access to healthcare. The internationally acclaimed group has also been providing healthcare in Kachin and Shan states, as well as programs across the country offering antiretroviral treatment to around 30,000 HIV patients. Since 2004, MSF has treated over 1,240,000 malaria patients in Rakhine state alone.  The stateless Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar are portrayed deliberately as Bangladeshis to deny them basic human rights and justify a genocidal campaign within this Buddhist country. As a result of a series of ethnic cleansing dr...

Burma's Parliament Speaker Shwe Mann addressing both houses on Thursday, 27 February 2014. (Photo: DVB) By  Shwe Aung DVB News February 28, 2014   Burma’s Parliamentary Speaker Shwe Mann urged relevant ministries to draft laws protecting national race and religion during Thursday’s assembly. The recommendation follows a message from President Thein Sein recommending legislative action on a petition he received in July 2013 from the Organisation for Protection of National Race and Religion (OPNRR), headed by Ashin Tilawka Biwuntha (also known as Tiloka Bhivamsa), member of the government appointed National Head Monks Committee. Upon Thein Sein’s receipt of the petition, which was forwarded to the Speaker, 1.3 million people had signed in favour of creating legislation to protect national race and religion. Since that time, the OPNRR said that they have gathered nearly three million additional supporters. In his message to the Speaker, Thein Sein decla...

Maungdaw High School's photos By KPN Maungdaw, Arakan State: Village administration officer of Gora Khali of Maungdaw south has been collecting money from the local villagers to support schoolteachers since November 3, said Hassan (not real name) from the locality. On November 2, Abdu Rahim, the village Administration officer invited some local elders and held a meeting and discussed, regarding the collection of money. In the meeting, they decided to collect money from the villagers to support the schoolteachers; otherwise, the lives of students will be destroyed, said Hassan. Government gives salaries to the teachers and is taking responsibility by government to run the schools. Why do we have to pay money again?, said Jalal (not real name), a local from the village. “We have no money, no jobs to support the teacher.”  The government doesn’t support the schoolteachers of Rohingya who are appointed by local villagers. The government only supports the Rakhine teacher...

Armed policemen stand on alert in the streets of Htan Gone village, Aug. 26, 2013. (Photo: AFP) By   Radio Free Asia August 27, 2013 Residents and legislators in central Myanmar’s Sagaing region expressed anger on Monday over a lack of action by authorities in containing Buddhist mobs who went on a rampage burning Muslim shops and houses at the weekend leaving hundreds homeless. Hundreds of rioters armed with swords and sticks torched dozens of shops and houses in Htan Gone village in Sagaing's Kanbalu township beginning Saturday in the first of spreading anti-Muslim violence to hit the region. Nearly 50 houses were burned down and 318 people were left homeless—many of them staying with friends and relatives or at a Muslim Arabic school in the areas after the two-day violence triggered by reports that a Buddhist woman was sexually assaulted by a Muslim man. Several people who moved to contain the violence were injured after being hit by slingshots and ...

Mohamed Farooq Mayu Press: May 28, 2013 A mosque and an Islamic religious orphanage were blazed in Lashio, a town situated in Shan State of  Burma on the night of 28 May 2013. The Buddhist thug surrounded the compound of the mosque, the largest one in Lashio, located in No.8 quarter at 8 pm tonight and they set fire the building at around 8.10 pm. Regarding the reliable sources, fire brigade failed to extinguish. Fire service holders simply claimed that they did not receive any further instruction to do so. The mob also set on fire an Islamic religious orphanage. The orphanage provided shelter more than 200 helpless and poor students across the Lashio. The event had been taken place by a dispute between a man and a woman who had been set on fire. It was spread out as the man is a Muslim. As per information from local residents, the man is not a Muslim. The woman victim hospitalized at Lashio general hospital. The authority imposed Section 144 there. There...

A policeman and residents stand around the body of a man in a street in riot-hit Meiktila, central Myanmar on March 22, 2013. STR/AFP/Getty Images) Reuters May 28, 2013 Muslims and Buddhists clashed in Myanmar's northern city of Lashio on Tuesday, witnesses said, as a wave of sectarian violence reached a mountainous region near China's border. Phone lines were down in the city of about 131,000 people and the extent of the violence was unclear. Witnesses reported several large fires and said a mosque and Buddhist monastery appear to have been torched. The violence followed unrest between Muslims and Buddhists in other parts of Myanmar over the past year, including fighting in the central city of Meikhtila in March that killed at least 44 people, mostly Muslims, and razed several Muslim neighborhoods. About 12,000 people lost their homes. Lashio, capital of Shan State, had been spared from the religious unrest. Known for its strong Chinese influence, it i...

Rohingya Muslims carry their belongings as they move after recent violence in Sittwe. (PHOTO: Reuters) By RFA  May 24, 2013 Authorities in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state have introduced a local regulation setting a two-child limit on Rohingya families in a bid to restrict population growth among the Muslim minority group, according to a government spokesman. Officials announced the measure—part of a directive that also enforces a ban on polygamy—this month but have not said how it will be enforced. The new rules have been imposed in northern Rakhine state’s Maungdaw district, which comprises Maungdaw and Buthidaung townships, along the border with Bangladesh. The two-child limit only applies to Rohingyas, a stateless group widely considered in Myanmar to be illegal immigrants from Bangladesh even though they have lived in the country for generations. Rakhine state spokesman Win Myaing said the measures were being implemented to curb Rohingyas’ high po...

A Muslim man from Win Kite village looks from behind the fence which residents built to protect their village from mob attacks, May 2, 2013. REUTERS/Minzayar Jared Ferrie Reuters : May 3, 2013 Three Muslim men peered over a bamboo fence built recently to fortify their village in central Myanmar. They gazed across dry rice paddies towards a nearby Buddhist community, looking for rising dust, a sign of an approaching mob. It was a false alarm. But a day earlier, on Wednesday, about 100 Buddhists armed with sticks had gathered outside the fence, threatening to burn the village and kill them, said the villagers of Win Kite, about a two-hour drive from Myanmar's largest city, Yangon. Police foiled that attack. But Muslims were taking no chances after four days of mob violence led by Buddhist monks in Meikhtila in March killed 44 people, mostly Muslims, and touched off a wave of unrest in central Myanmar that threatens to derail the country's nascent economic a...

Nyan Win the National League of Democracy spokesperson Photo: @AFP As advocates condemn "ethnic cleansing" of the Rohingya, officials say no such group exists. YANGON, Myanmar — From the depths of obscurity, Myanmar’s highly beleaguered Muslim Rohingya ethnicity has become something of a global cause célèbre. The United Nations deems the roughly 1 million population group one of the world’s “most persecuted” minorities. In a report last week, Human Right Watch deployed some of the most potent language at its disposal in describing their mistreatment: “ethnic cleansing” and “crimes against humanity.” The online pro-Rohingya call to arms #RohingyaNOW was, for a brief blip in March, Twitter’s highest-trending phrase. Even US President Barack Obama, in his first and only visit to Myanmar last November, urged the nation to accept that Rohingya “hold within themselves the same dignity as you do.” But these are lofty expectations from a nation in which the gov...