The Stateless Rohingya Blog

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - At least 10 million people are not recognised as nationals by any country. The United Nations launched a campaign on Tuesday to end statelessness within a decade. Here are examples from around the world. MYANMAR: The Rohingya from western Myanmar have suffered a history of abuse. Unlike the majority population which is Buddhist, they are Muslims of South Asian descent. In 1982 Myanmar passed a law which denied them access to citizenship. Many fled to Bangladesh in 1991 and 1992 following a government crackdown. Tens of thousands more left Myanmar following ethnic violence in 2012. There are an estimated 800,000 to 1.33 million Rohingya in Myanmar and 200,000 to 500,000 in Bangladesh. Some end up sold into slavery on fishing boats and plantations. KUWAIT: Many people among the nomadic Bedouin tribes failed to acquire citizenship when the country became independent in 1961. Their descendents are known as bedoun, which means "without...

People shop at a market in Maungdaw, northern Rakhine state June 6, 2014.CREDIT: REUTERS/SOE ZEYA TUN By Jared Ferrie  Reuters UK Human rights groups condemned on Friday a Myanmar government plan that could force thousands of minority Rohingya Muslims into detention camps indefinitely if they do not qualify for citizenship. The U.S. and some other embassies in Myanmar had raised their concern with the government about some aspects of the plan, a U.S. official told Reuters. Most of Myanmar's 1.1 million Rohingya Muslims live in apartheid-like conditions in Rakhine state on the west coast of the predominantly Buddhist country, and almost 140,000 are displaced after deadly clashes with ethnic Rakhine Buddhists in 2012. The government has refused to grant most Rohingya citizenship and refers to them as Bengali, which implies they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh despite having lived in Myanmar for generations. The Rakhine State Action Plan will requir...

By Reuter September 22, 2014 YANGON – Myanmar gave citizenship on Monday to 209 Muslims displaced by sectarian violence, after the first phase of a project aimed at determining the status of about a million Rohingya whose claims to nationality have been rejected in the past.  A Rohingya man looks at his Myanmar Naturalized Citizenship identification card during the ceremony for oath of citizenship and giving the Citizenship identification cards and Naturalized Citizenship Identification cards in Myae Pone Township, Rakhine State, western Myanmar, Sept 22. Forty Rohingya people from Taung Paw refugee camp received Myanmar Citizenship Identification card and Naturalized Citizenship Identification card as per 1982 Burma Citizenship Law, local sources said. (EPA photo) The Rohingya Muslim minority live under apartheid-like conditions in Rakhine State in the west, needing permission to move from their villages or from camps where almost 140,000 remain after being displa...

Policemen walk towards burning buildings in Sittwe, capital of Rakhine state in western Burma, where sectarian violence is ongoing, June 12, 2012.  By Aung Hla Tun and Jared Ferrie Reuters September 11, 2014 YANGON  - Myanmar on Thursday lifted a curfew imposed in June 2012 when clashes between Buddhists and minority Muslims erupted throughout western Rakhine state, killing at least 192 people that year. Most victims of the violence were Muslim Rohingya, who live under apartheid-like conditions. The United Nations says almost 140,000 Rohingya remain in camps after being driven from their homes by Buddhist mobs in 2012. Sectarian tension has simmered in Rakhine and aid agencies were forced to evacuate the state capital of Sittwe in March when Buddhists attacked their offices after accusing them of favoring Muslims. But state government spokesman Win Myaing said that tension had eased. “The curfew ... will be lifted effective today, as the security...

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry gives a speech during the 7th Lower Mekong Initiative ministerial meeting at the Myanmar International Convention Centre (MICC) in Naypyitaw, August 9, 2014. (Photo: REUTERS/ Soe Zeya Tun) By Lesley Wroughton Reuters August 9, 2014 NAYPYIDAW, Myanmar: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Saturday pressed Myanmar's political leaders on Washington's human rights concerns and urged its President Thein Sein to step up constitutional reforms to ensure elections next year are fully credible. Kerry, in Myanmar's capital for the ASEAN Regional Forum, met Thein Sein and discussed plans for elections in 2015, concerns over the treatment of the minority Muslim Rohingya, as well as the jailing of journalists, a senior State Department official said. He also discussed these issues with Shwe Mann, the speaker of parliament and leader of the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP). While officials acknowledged there had ...

Chief Superintendent Zaw Min Oo talks to the media during a news conference about riots in Mandalay July 2, 2014. Myanmar police fired rubber bullets on Wednesday to disperse crowds of Buddhists and Muslims facing off in the streets of Mandalay, the country's second-largest city, police said. (Photo: Reuters/Stringer) By   Jared Ferrie and Aung Hla Tun Reuters July 2, 2014 Myanmar  police fired rubber bullets on Wednesday to disperse crowds of Buddhists and Muslims facing off in the second-largest city of Mandalay, police said, in the latest outbreak of trouble in two years of sectarian unrest.  Police deployed more than 600 officers after a crowd of about 300 Buddhists including 30 monks began throwing stones near a tea shop owned by a Muslim man at 11 p.m. (1630 GMT) on Tuesday, according to a statement released by Mandalay police. "One policeman, three Buddhists and one Muslim were injured by stones in the incident," the statement said. "Two...

By Reuters May 15, 2014 WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama extended some economic sanctions against Myanmar for another year on Thursday, telling Congress the step is needed despite some progress on reforms made by the country formerly known as Burma. Obama notified leaders of Congress in a letter that he was renewing for another year the National Emergencies Act, which prohibits U.S. businesses and individuals from investing in Myanmar or doing business with Myanmar figures involved in repression of the democracy movement since the mid-1990s. Obama, who visited Myanmar in 2012, said the Myanmar government had made much advances in critical areas such as the release of more than 1,100 political prisoners, progress toward a nationwide ceasefire, the legalization of unions and taking steps to improve the country’s labour standards. However, he said, “Despite great strides that Burma has made in its reform effort, the situation in the country continues to pose an...

Severely malnourished 25-day-old twins are held by her mother Norbagoun, a displaced Rohingya woman, in their house at the Dar Paing camp for internally displaced people in Sittwe, Rakhine state, April 24, 2014. By Aubrey Belford Reuters April 28, 2014 As three-month-old Asoma Khatu approached her final, laboured breaths, her neighbour Elia, a 50-year-old former farmer, dug through the strongbox holding some of the last medicines in this camp for Myanmar's displaced Rohingya. First, some paracetamol for the severely malnourished girl's fever and a wet towel for her forehead. Then some rehydration salts for her diarrhoea. There was nothing else left. The death of Asoma in a dusty, stifling hot camp a two-hour boat ride from Sittwe, capital of Rakhine State in west Myanmar, is part of a growing health crisis for stateless Muslim Rohingya that has been exacerbated by restrictions on international aid. "I think my child would have made it if someone ...

Samantha Power, the United State’s ambassador to the United Nations, speaks during an U.N. Security Council emergency meeting, in this April 13, 2014 photo, at United Nations headquarters. (AP) By Reuters April 17, 2014 UNITED NATIONS: U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power on Thursday urged the Myanmar government to intervene in Rakhine State to stop violence between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims and ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid. At least 237 have been killed in religious violence in Myanmar since June 2012 and more than 140,000 displaced, many of them stateless Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State, one of Myanmar's poorest regions that is home to 1 million Rohingya. U.N. officials have warned that the violence poses a serious threat to the country's dramatic economic and political reforms as it emerges from a half century of military rule. "We continue to support Burma's reforms, but are greatly concerned...

Suspected Uighurs are transported back to a detention facility in the town of Songkhla in southern Thailand after visiting women and children at a separate shelter March 26, 2014. Picture taken March 26, 2014. By Andrew R.C. Marshall & Amy Sawitta Lefevre Reuters April 10, 2014 After a two-hour trek through swamp and jungle, Police Major General Thatchai Pitaneelaboot halts in a trash-strewn clearing near Thailand's remote border with Malaysia. "This is it," he says, surveying the remains of a deserted camp on a hillside pressed flat by the weight of human bodies. Just weeks before, says Thatchai, hundreds of Rohingya Muslim refugees from Myanmar were held captive here by one of the shadowy gangs who have turned southern Thailand into a human-trafficking superhighway. With Thatchai's help, Thailand is scrambling to show it is combating the problem. It aims to avoid a downgrade in an influential U.S. State Department annual report ...