The Stateless Rohingya Blog

By globalvoices The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees considers the situation of between 110-150,000 Burmese refugees located in camps on the border with Thailand as  one of 29 protracted refugee situations globally . And, according to East Asia Forum, there are also an  additional 1.5-2 million refugees in Thailand  and represent the ‘visible side of human rights abuse.' Ruled by a military junta from 1962 to 2011, Burma, known locally and by the United Nations as  Myanmar , has often been accused of violating human rights and the forcible relocation of civilians. Although an ostensibly civilian government was  controversially elected in 2010 , a quarter of seats in parliament as well as three cabinet seats are reserved for the army. Other concerns include the use of forced labour, among them children,  human trafficking  and internal ethnic conflict . In an extensive post, Mary Ditton, a Senior Lecturer in Health Management in Au...

By Ellie Bogue   Burmese students from Heritage High School got a chance to share their culture with some of their fellow students Thursday night during a member family dinner at Cornerstone Youth Center, Monroeville. Heritage senior Ka Bee spoke about his family's experience of leaving Burma, living in a Thailand Refugee Camp, and then coming to America. Ka Bee said his family walked for three days on foot to get over the Thailand border. He was born in the Thai refugee camp and lived there for the first 13 years of his life. Ka Bee's parents wanted to bring up their family under better conditions and were eventually able to get refugee status to come to the United States. They lived first in North Carolina, but the family was not comfortable living there because there were no other Burmese in the school Ka Bee attended or the neighborhood where the family lived. None of the family members spoke English. Luckily, they had relatives in Fort Wayne, so...

Photo: AP A Myanmar activist puts cutouts of imprisoned Hla Hla Win, a reporter of the Norway-based Democratic Voice of Burma, on a wall near Myanmar Embassy during a rally in Bangkok, Thailand, (File September 9, 2011). Key advocates for Burmese political prisoners are calling for the international community to keep economic and trade sanctions in place until Burma’s government releases all political prisoners, including those detained in ethnic areas. United Nations agencies in Burma say an easing of sanctions is crucial to allow funds to support poverty alleviation programs in the country. The rights monitoring group, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, says the international community must maintain pressure on Burma’s government to ensure the release of all political prisoners before economic and trade sanctions are fully lifted. The secretary of the Thailand-based Association, Bo Gyi, himself a former political prisoner, spoke to foreign journal...

By LALIT K JHA / THE IRRAWADDY Ban Ki-moon, center, Secretary General of United Nations shakes hands with Demetris Christofias, left, President of Cyprus and Dervis Eroglu, right, Turkish Cypriot leader after a meeting the three had at the UN Headquarters on Jan. 25, 2012. (Photo: AP) United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Wednesday that he is planning to make a trip to Burma in the near future and announced that his chief of staff, Vijay Nambiar, will soon transition to become his full-time special envoy to the country. “I am planning to visit in the near future Myanmar [Burma] to have further discussions with the Myanmar authorities,” Ban told reporters at the UN headquarters in New York. Ban said the UN has been playing a very key role in furthering the democratization process of Burma. “I am very pleased and encouraged by what the current Myanmar authorities led by President Thein Sein [have been doing], including the releasing of political prisoners,” he said. Respo...

 Kaladan News Chittagong, Bangladesh:  More than 40,000 Rohingya children in northern Arakan are blacklisted and have been deprived of rights to travel, go to school because of their parents had an unauthorized marriage, according to Arakan Project report on Issues to be raised concerning the situation of Stateless Rohingya children in Myanmar (Burma) on January 2012, submitted to the UN Committee on the rights of the child.

By David Brunnstrom and Sebastian Moffett (Reuters) - The European Union will suspend travel bans on the president of Myanmar and other senior officials, following reforms that have included the release of hundreds of political prisoners. And EU foreign ministers held out the prospect of a further easing of sanctions in April if a "remarkable programme of political reform" and a commitment to economic and social development continued. In the steps agreed on Monday, the EU said it would suspend visa bans on Myanmar's president, Thein Sein, the country's vice-presidents, cabinet members and parliamentary speakers. French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said he saw real willingness by the government to liberalise and democratise and was now watching whether Myanmar freed political prisoners, allowed strikes, and held transparent elections on April 1. "If this process of democratisation goes further, we shall go further in lifting sanctions," he told ...

By SIMON ROUGHNEEN John McCain and Aung San Suu Kyi speak at a press conference in Rangoon on Sunday. (PHOTO: The Irrawaddy) BANGKOK—A US delegation fronted by Sen. John McCain and Sen. Joseph Lieberman will request that the Burmese government allow international observers to oversee April by-elections, which, if deemed free and fair, will almost certainly see the US remove some sanctions on the Burmese government. “Obviously we will have to look carefully at the process of the elections,” said McCain, who conceded that Burma's reforms in recent months—including the release of several hundred political prisoners—are “a dramatic change in policy and behaviour in as short a time as a year ago,” he said. McCain confirmed that the delegation, which arrived in Burma on Sunday, would ask Burma's government to allow international observation of the April by-elections, in response to a question about the issue from this correspondent. A positive assessment by th...