The Stateless Rohingya Blog

(Monks Patrol Meikhtila As Military Watches) Alders Ledge: March 25, 2013 Love? What Love? (part of The Darkness Visible series) When Buddha was a young man he sat at beneath a large tree and watched as the peasants prepared the fields for the planting. Instead of worrying about the hunger of his people, the Buddha thought to himself about the plight of the worms in the soil as the plows turned over the land. If the crops were not planted the people would starve to death. But that did not cross the Buddha's mind as he worried about and animal that can survive being cut in half. To the Buddhists of today this is supposed to represent his love for even the least of these. But I ask what love? It is hard to imagine any person, regardless of his supposed deity status, thinking that the life of a single worm was more important than the lives of millions of starving humans. It is a self righteous behavior that has become characteristic of the Buddha. While he had eve...

PRESS RELEASE STOP KILLING OF MUSLIM IN BURMA (MYANAMR) Date: 25.03.2013 The European Rohingya Council (ERC) strongly condemns the indiscriminate killings of Muslims and destructions of their properties and religious places by Bhuddist including monks. Since 20 March 2013, hundreds of Muslims has been killed, at least 14 mosques and hundreds of Muslim homes were destroyed. Shops damaged and looted, and more than 40,000 has been displaced in the central Burma town of Meiktila and around the airport area of capital Naypyidaw. The violence spread to Yameithein Saturday after relative calm and a mosque was destroyed. Muslim residents have fled their homes. Extremist Buddhist mobs and monks armed with sticks and lethal weapons are prowling the streets and hunting the Muslims. 5 Islamic religious teachers and 28 Madrassa students including children as young as 12 years old, were among those killed. This was a pre-planned attack on Muslims minority with the hel...

Myanmar Muslims living in Malaysia show banners and placards during a demonstration against the killings of Muslims in Meikhtila, in Kuala Lumpur March 25, 2013. Hundreds of troops kept an uneasy calm in central Myanmar on Saturday after martial law was imposed to quell three days of bloody unrest between Buddhists and Muslims that is testing the country's nascent democracy. Reuters /Bazuki Muhammad By Aye Win Myint Reuters March 25, 2013  MEIKHTILA, Myanmar (Reuters) - Myanmar's government is struggling to contain anti-Muslim violence that touched the outskirts of the capital, Naypyitaw, at the weekend and forced it to send troops to patrol the streets in the town where the recent trouble started. Four houses and a small mosque in Tatkon township on the northern edges of Naypyitaw were set ablaze late on Sunday, a civil servant in the capital told Reuters on Monday. Communal tension, stifled under half a century of army rule, has resurfaced since Presi...

Residents ride a motorcycle past a burning building in riot-hit Meiktila, central Myanmar on March 22, 2013. Associated Press March 25, 2013 YANGON, Myanmar – Anti-Muslim mobs rampaged through three more towns in Myanmar's predominantly Buddhist heartland over the weekend, destroying mosques and burning dozens of homes despite government efforts to stop the nation's latest outbreak of sectarian violence from spreading. President Thein Sein declared a state of emergency in central Myanmar on Friday and deployed army troops to the worst hit city, Meikhtila, where 32 people were killed and 10,000 mostly Muslim residents were displaced. But even as soldiers imposed order there after several days of anarchy that saw armed Buddhists torch the city's Muslim quarters, anti-Muslim unrest has spread south toward the capital, Naypyitaw. A Muslim resident of Tatkone, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) from Meikhtila, said by telephone that a group of about 20 men rans...

Beatings, extortion and the seizure of their homes in Burma forced these women and 120 families from their village to flee Burma in early 2009. Picture: Greg Constantine. Who are Myanmar's Rohingya people? Often dubbed as one the world's most persecuted ethnic groups, the Rohingya are Muslims of Myanmar. Roughly about 8 lakh Rohingya live in Myanmar. Ethnically, they are much closer to the Indo-Aryan people of India and Bangladesh than the Sino-Tibetans that constitute the majority of Myanmar's population. They live in Rakhine state in the country's western coast. There is a controversy over their history in Myanmar. The Rohingya claim to have lived in the country for centuries, but the ruling military junta considers them recent immigrants. Ethnic groups also consider them outsiders How did the 1982 citizenship law affect them? According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the 1982 citizenship law deprived the Rohingyas of Myanmar...

Mayu Press: March 24, 2013   By Mohamed Farooq   The Burmese Police got various hand-made weapons of Arakan Liberation Party (ALP) in two different townships of Arakan;   Kyauk Taw and Buthidaung on last few days back with the exact information of Rakhine old persons. On 12th March 2013, a police patrol team found out 18 guns in the forest near Nyung Kron village under Let Way Dak village tract of Buthidaung Township.  The other Police personnel grabbed 28 hand-made guns in a valley near Pri long mountain range situated between Myauk Taung and Malar village on 14 March 2013 in Kyauk Taw Township where violence had occurred and slaughtered many Rohingya Muslims. Simultaneously, they had got 29 guns more in the jungle of Alar Taung Mountain, five miles away from Nga Saung Bek village in Kyauk Taw. Moreover, some Rakhine habitants mostly from rural areas in Arakan  have to handover  726 hand-made guns, 130 swords, 506 javelins...

DARING TO DREAM: A Rohingya boy at the Phangnga Shelter for Children and Families looks up with his eyes full of hope for a better life. Bangkok Post: March 24, 2013 For thousands of Rohingya fleeing Myanmar’s troubled Rakhine state, the sleepy fishing village of Ban Hin Lat is the first port of call on their difficult quest to find better lives. If they make it to the village in the Khura Buri district of Phangnga they will find a relatively well-off fishing community and locals more than sympathetic to their plight. Most of the locals are Muslims, and some Myanmar nationals work legally on fishing boats. In the grounds of the local mosque, out of sight from the main road, is a 10m Rohingya vessel inscribed in Thai with the words “Rohingya people _ the forgotten citizens of the world”. Ga, a 43-year-old Thai Muslim who heads the unofficial Rohingya Help Centre in Hin Lat, says she had a negative attitude toward the Rohingya before she got to know them. “O...