The Stateless Rohingya Blog

Maungdaw, Arakan State: Kyikanpyin (Kawabil) village had become uprooted after authority enforced the Rohingya villagers to registered as Bengali in the place of Rohingya –under race column – in government registration program - digital Photograph and signature – since June 3,  according to a local elder who denied to be named. “More than 200 security forces – Burma border security force (Nasaka), Army, police and Hluntin – surrounded the village to stop fleeing the villagers from the village, to force the villagers to join the government registration program. But, most of the villagers –mostly male villagers- flee from their village leaving their all properties.” The village had become a war field area as the security forces destroyed all the properties of Rohingya and took the valuables things from Rohingya home. The forces destroy mostly the kitten wares and grain stock, said a school teacher from Maungdaw. “The forces stationed in the village like their out...

Aung San Suu Kyi at today’s World Economic Forum BBC debate in Naypyidaw (Photo: Simon Roughneen) PressTV: June 7, 2013 Myanmar’s opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has rejected criticism leveled at her over her silence about the persecution of the Rohingya Muslim community, while announcing her desire to run for president. The Muslim minority of Rohingyas in Myanmar accounts for about five percent of the country’s population of nearly 60 million. The persecuted minority has faced torture, neglect, and repression since the country achieved independence in 1948. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have called on Myanmar’s government to address the plight of the Rohingya Muslim population and to protect the community against Buddhist extremists. “At the moment nobody seems to be very satisfied with me because I’m not taking sides,” Suu Kyi said. “I have not been silent. It’s just that they are not hearing what they want to hear from me.” “I do not wa...

The Associated Press  May 5, 2013   YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Several women villagers from Myanmar's Rohingya minority have been shot dead in a confrontation with security officials, police and activists said Wednesday. A police officer in Mrauk-U township in western Rakhine state said Wednesday that three women died in Parein village, where they were part of a crowd that defied efforts to relocate them from the housing in which they have been living since their original homes were burned by Buddhists in a wave of sectarian clashes last year. The officer from the Special Branch political police, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to release information, said two men and two women were injured. A website covering Rohingya news, Rohingya Blogger, said four women were shot dead and five other villagers wounded in the Tuesday confrontation, which broke out when workers from another township came to unload wood to build new dwellings. It said ...

Rohingya children play on a tent at Bawdupah camp for internally displaced people on the outskirts of Sittwe. Photograph: Soe Than Win/AFP/Getty Images The Guardian: June 3, 2013 The international community must put pressure on Burma to protect Rohingya Muslims and end segregation in Rakhine state How desperate and distrustful of your government do you have to be to refuse an  offer  of relocation when a cyclone is about to hit your home? That many of the displaced Rohingya people in  Burma 's Rakhine state took this decision demonstrates how difficult their lives have become. For months now, the Rohingya Muslim people have been targeted in a campaign that a  Human Rights Watch report  (pdf) has described as "ethnic cleansing". Rohingya Muslims in Burma have been forced into segregated  settlements  and camps, and – in many cases – cut off from lifesaving aid. I visited displacement camps in Rakhine in May with  Refuge...

Arab News Ramzy Barod June 4, 2013 ON April 21, the BBC obtained disturbing video footage shot in Myanmar. It confirmed extreme reports of what has been taking place in that country, even as it is being touted by the US and European governments as a success story pertaining to political reforms and democracy. The BBC footage was difficult to watch even when faces of Muslim Rohingya victims were blurred. To say the least, the level of violence exhibited by their Arakan Buddhist attackers was frightening. “The Burmese police (stood) by as shops, homes and mosques are looted and burned, and failing to intervene as Buddhist mobs, including monks, kill fleeing Muslims,” the BBC reported. A Rohingya man was set ablaze while still alive. The police watched. To some extent, international media are finally noticing the plight of the Rohingyas who are experiencing what can only be described as genocide. And there are reasons for this. On one hand, the atrocities being carri...

Environmental Graffiti: June 4, 2013 Photo:  Artur Gutowski A Rohingya girl living in one of the Bangladeshi camps Conditions in these refugee camps are desperate. The cobbled-together huts that pass as housing have no electricity and limited  access  to water. Disease is rife under such squalid conditions, as is violence against the vulnerable, and little aid comes in from the outside world. This is the home of the Rohingya, one of the most persecuted minorities in the world. Landless and poverty-stricken, they are unwanted by both the country of their birth and the states to which they have fled. Photo:  Artur Gutowski A man and child overlooking the area Photographer Artur Gutowski captured these touching images of Rohingya refugees in the Kutupalong and Shaplapour camps on the Burmese-Bangladeshi border. “According to Human Rights Watch, the conditions in the camp are more desperate than in any other area where the organization is  a...

Caged Rohingya overcrowded in cells at Phang Nga Immigration Photo by Channel 4 still Human Rights Watch June 4, 2013 Provide Asylum Seekers Access to UN Refugee Agency The  Thai  government should immediately end the detention under inhumane conditions of more than 1,700 ethnic Rohingya from  Burma , Human Rights Watch said today. Rohingya asylum seekers should be transferred from overcrowded cells in immigration detention centers to get screening and protection from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).  Shocking video footage of Rohingya locked up in an overcrowded immigration facility in Thailand’s Phang Nga province was shown on  ITN Channel 4 News  on May 31, 2013. Thailand’s prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra had agreed in January to permit Rohingya arriving by boat in Thailand to stay temporarily, initially for six months, until they could be safely repatriated to their places of origin or resettled to ...