The Stateless Rohingya Blog

Rohingya Muslims pass time near their shelter at a refugee camp outside Sittwe, on June 4, 2014. Over 140,000 people, mostly Rohingya, have been living in sprawling, squalid displacement camps in Rakhine following two bouts of violence in 2012. REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun    By  Thin Lei Win Thomson Reuters August 27, 2014 There was a time when ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and stateless Rohingya Muslims in western Myanmar lived and worked together. They were once neighbours, albeit uneasy ones, sharing a tense but relatively stable existence. Then in June 2012, religious clashes between the two groups drove them apart and forced 140,000 people - mostly Rohingya - from their homes. When I first met the displaced Rohingya in May 2013 in makeshift camps outside the Rakhine capital Sittwe, I thought their displacement would be temporary, the conflict somehow eventually resolved. But when I went again two months ago, I was struck by how these camps – home to two-thi...

A Rohingya Muslim prays at a detention centre in Kanchanaburi province, Thailand July 10, 2013. The stateless people arrived in Thailand in January after fleeing conflict in Myanmar's Rakhine state. REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha BANGKOK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - By the time Muslim rubber tappers came across the boy in a jungle in southern Thailand, he was so weak he couldn’t even wave away the flies an d mosquitoes that covered his body.  The teenager, a stateless Rohingya Muslim from Myanmar, had become paralysed from the waist down after 10 weeks in a traffickers’ camp overseen by brutal guards, where he was forced to squat during the day and sleep in a foetal position at night.   The rubber tappers rescued the boy, whose name has been withheld to protect his identity, along with 30 others who had also lost the use of their legs, and took them to a nearby mosque where they were given food and shelter and slowly recovered. He had left his home in western My...

By  Danish Refugee Council Thomson Reuters Foundation August 29, 2013 Tailor-made business grants enable IDPs in Myanmar’s Rakhine State to get back on their feet and resume livelihood activities. DRC’s recently launched livelihood programme will provide support to both Buddhist and Muslim communities affected by last year’s sectarian violence. This week DRC delivered the first round of small-business grants to Buddhist IDPs displaced by the June and October 2012 sectarian violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine State. The violence led to the displacement of more than 140,000 people, both Muslims and Buddhists, across Rakhine State. The evident need for life-saving assistance continues. But as the IDP situation evolves from an emergency context to a more protracted displacement scenario, livelihood support will be a key element in providing economic opportunities for IDPs and other conflict-affected communities and decrease dependency on humanitarian aid. ...

Zawbader Hattu, 31 (left), sitting at a government-run shelter for women and children in Phang Nga in southern Thailand, on June 18, 2013. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj   Thomson Reuters Foundation July 23, 2013 PHANG NGA, Thailand - Record numbers of stateless Rohingya Muslims are fleeing Myanmar following  two bouts of sectarian violence last year  that left scores dead and some 140,000 displaced, most of them Muslims. Estimates on the number of people leaving on boats from the Bay of Bengal between June 2012 and May 2013 range from 27,000 to nearly 35,000 - the biggest exodus in years. Some passengers were from Bangladesh but most were  Rohingya , who have lived in Myanmar for generations but are denied citizenship.  Zawbader Hattu, 31, was one of them. Detained in a government-run shelter in southern Thailand with about 60 other women and children since February, she told Thomson Reuters Foundation why she left Myanmar.  “The main re...