The Stateless Rohingya Blog

 A Rohingya boy wraps himself with a sarong as he walks in the rain at a makeshift camp for displaced Rohingya people in Sittwe.  Gemunu Amarasinghe / AP   Al Jazeera May 14, 2013 Vessels with 200 Rohingya Muslims evacuating camps ahead of storm sink, leaving only one survivor, say UN officials. Boats carrying about 200 Rohingya Muslims who were evacuating ahead of a storm have capsized off western Myanmar, killing all but one person, UN officials have said. The vessels hit trouble on Monday night after leaving Pauktaw township in Rakhine state, said a spokeswoman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). "They were travelling to another camp ahead of the cyclone," the spokeswoman added. Kirsten Mildren, who works for the same UN agency, told Al Jazeera there was only one confirmed survivor from Monday's accident. The victims were trying to escape  Cyclone Mahasen  which is expected on Thursday and Fri...

Boats carrying Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar, trying to cross the Naf River into Bangladesh to escape sectarian violence, are intercepted by Bangladeshi Coast Guard officials in Teknaf on June 18, 2012. By Jared Ferrie Reuters: May 14, 2013 (Reuters) - A boat carrying about 100 Rohingya Muslims capsized off western Myanmar with many feared drowned at the start of a mass evacuation from low-lying regions ahead of Cyclone Mahasen, a U.N. official said on Tuesday. The boat struck rocks off Pauktaw township in Rakhine State and sank late on Monday, Barbara Manzi, head of the Myanmar office at the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told Reuters. She said an unknown number of people were missing. The United Nations warned last week that the tropical cyclone could bring "life-threatening conditions" to thousands of people living in camps in the west of Myanmar after their homes were destroyed in violence between majority Buddhi...

Bangkok Post: May 13, 2013 YANGON - Myanmar on Sunday began moving people into emergency shelters as a cyclone threatened to batter a violence-wracked region home to tens of thousands of internal refugees. About 140,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) living in flimsy tents or makeshift housing are seen as particularly vulnerable to cyclone Mahasen, which was gathering strength in the Bay of Bengal. The cyclone is expected to make landfall somewhere near the Myanmar-Bangladesh border on Thursday morning, according to Myanmar's Department of Meteorology and Hydrology. It said Mahasen, which was packing winds of up to about 100 kilometres (60 miles) per hour, was likely to intensify into a "severe cyclonic storm" within the  next  24 hours, warning ships to be on alert. The IDPs at particular risk are mostly stateless Rohingya Muslims uprooted by two outbreaks of deadly religious violence since June last year. "There are people still living in t...

Photos created by kalle Bergbom Facebook Thomas Fuller New York Times: May 11, 2013 BANGKOK — A tropical cyclone in the Andaman Sea is headed close to an area in Myanmar where tens of thousands of victims of ethnic and religious violence are living in makeshift camps, adding urgency to fears of what the United Nations has termed a looming “humanitarian catastrophe” for displaced families. Of the more than 130,000 people forced to flee their homes in rioting between Buddhists and Muslims over the last year in western Myanmar, around half are living in low-lying camps near the sea, the United Nations says. Human rights organizations have issued repeated warnings that the displaced people are at risk of disease and hunger during the rainy season, which begins this month and continues until around September. “We’re definitely very concerned,” said Vivian Tan, a spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the United Nations refugee agency. “...

Panelists pictured at the FCCT in Bangkok on Thursday. (Photo: Lance Woodward) Irrawaddy News: May 11, 2013 The Burmese government is conducting a concerted campaign of genocide against its Muslim minorities, with Buddhist monks and the state collaborating in violent anti-Muslim attacks, the academic and activist Maung Zarni said during a panel discussion at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand (FCCT) in Bangkok on Thursday. “It’s nothing short of genocide,” he said. “Genocide is a process that unfolds; it’s a virus that spreads quickly into a contagion that cannot be stopped. What has happened in Burma in the last two years is evil, vile and depraved,” he said. The genocide in Burma is now on the scale of Pol Pot’s Cambodia, he added. “And it won’t stop until all the country’s Muslims and Rohingyas are eliminated.” These are challenging times, Burmese Muslim leader Myo Win said. He runs an education NGO called Smile in Rangoon, and came from Burma espe...

Head of Turkish Parliamentary commission Ustun: We heard the news about violence against Rohingya Muslims from Anadolu Agency" Turkish Press: May 10, 2013 ANKARA - Turkish Parliamentary Human Rights Commission began to investigate the violence which targeted Muslims last year in Rakhine, a province of Myanmar. Chairman of Turkish Parliamentary Human Rights Commission Ayhan Sefer Ustun explained to the AA correspondent the preparations for reporting the violence against Rohingya Muslims which started last summer. Emphasizing the importance of AA's sharing news, videos photographs from the region, Ustun said "we learned the developments in the region from AA. It helped us react quickly." Criticizing the silence of the world and actions of Buddhist monks, Ustun stated that "The speeches of Buddhist Monks were far superior than Hitler's". Ustun indicated that if the conditions were suitable, he would visit Rakhine.

Maungdaw, Arakan State: The Burma’s border security force (Nasaka) is conducting irregular surveys in Rohingya villages of Maungdaw and Buthidaung Townships coercing the Rohingya villagers to use ‘Bengali’ as their racial name in place of ‘Rohingya’ against their will, according to villagers of Maungdaw Township. “Some villagers were arrested or tortured for opposing their dictation while others run-away. For instance, the Nasaka Director went to Kawar bill village with security force to arrest Maulana Johar (22), son of Maulana Sayed Amin, hailed from Kawar Bill over the allegation that he had incited villagers not to participate in conducting surveys. So, he is going into hiding to avoid arrest. He is the Imam of the mosque.” Besides, four other youths including Hussain (20), son of Idris were also arrest from the village tract by the same accusation yesterday and brought to the Nasaka camp where they were detained, a relative of Hussain said. Similarly, the conc...