The Stateless Rohingya Blog

In this Sept. 14, 2013 photo, Muslims travel past a road barrier next to a security checkpoint in Maungdaw, northern Rakhine state, Myanmar. Photo: Gemunu Amarasinghe, AP By Aylin Kocaman Arab News November 30, 2013 WHAT happens when you change a country’s name? Can you erase an unwanted past? Is changing the name a new beginning? Do the people in that country and their memories assume a new form? Perhaps that was what the junta in Burma was trying to do by erasing its colonial past by changing the country’s name to Myanmar. And maybe even by erasing some of the country’s minorities.  Myanmar has been under military rule for 50 years and is an absolute military state. The country has been synonymous with the terms assimilation, genocide, discrimination and even fascism. One expert says, “Calling what has befallen the Rohingya Muslims who make up the minority ‘war’ is putting it mildly. This is a massacre!”  According to the United Nations, the Rohin...

Burma Times (Mohamed Ibrahim) Thursday, Nov. 28  12:00-13:45 Room: ASP 3H1- Hosted by Jean Lambert, Green MEP for London The exhibition Features a photographic essay on the plight of Burma’s Rohingya from award-winning photographer Greg Constantine. The panel’s main speaker, The EU Parliament MEP Jean lambert, said despite some progress in Burma the Rohingya community continues to be persecuted and more must be done. Nevertheless, despite its commitments to the international community to prevent sectarian violence between the Rohingya and the ethnic Rakhine Buddhists, Burma’s government has yet failed to prevent another incident added to the long history of human rights violations and prosecution that follows to the Rohingyas. After the 2012 Rakhine state riots, according to estimated data, 650 Rohingyas were killed, 1200 are missing and up to 140,000 have been displaced. The European parliament has passed two resolutions in the past few months on the situation of the Rohing...

Latifar, an asylum seeker from Myanmar, with her husband Niza, their 7 year-old daughter. (AAP) By SBS News  Australia November 29, 2013   The federal government says it will not return a Rohingya asylum-seeker family and their Australian-born baby to Nauru until their case is properly dealt with. An asylum seeker family from Myanmar with a sick newborn baby will be allowed to stay in Australia for the time being. Lawyers for the family have struck a deal with the Department of Immigration to allow them to argue their case with procedural fairness. Federal Circuit Court Judge Margaret Cassidy recognised the deal in Brisbane on Friday. Listen: SBS reporter Stefan Armbruster tells Kristina Kukolja what happened in court today. The family of five was challenging a government order to send them back to a detention centre on Nauru after baby Ferouz was born in Brisbane. They will be allowed to stay in Australia until they receive a fair hearing and aft...

By MYARF  |  November 29, 2013 RvisionTV News Maungdaw, Arakan Myanmar Military Regime has achieved untold political gains by scapegoating Muslims especially Rohingyas under the smokescreens of Buddhism and national sovereignty. Likewise, Rakhine politicians and extremists, either, have not fallen behind the regime in targeting Rohingyas to achieve their political mileage. The reason why Rakhines have become so hostile and brutal towards Rohingyas is not but political. They consider the presence of ‘Rohingyas or any other Muslim groups’ in Arakan a barrier to fulfilling their dream of an independent and exclusively Rakhine Buddhist state called “Maha Rakkhita Naing-Ngan-Daw-Gri.” On the other hand, they consider (supremacist) Burman Buddhists equal or bigger hindrance to achieving their political target. So to fulfill their dream, first they have to crush either one of the two groups they consider their enemies. As a first step, when Myanmar triggered violence against...

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Photo Reuters  By DVB News November 28, 2013 More than 200 people have died and 140,000 have been displaced in religious violence over the last year and a half. The violence started in Arakan state in June 2012 between Arakanese Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims. Although many Arakanese Buddhists lost their homes, the majority of the victims were Muslims. Then in Meikhtila last March, mobs of Buddhists torched Muslim homes, businesses and mosques in anti-Muslim violence that spread to other cities all over the country. Amid intensifying religious tensions in Burma, DVB Debate’s final episode of the season discusses how to end religious violence. In one of the liveliest debates on the show so far, panelists and guests plea for more law enforcement against hate speech and discrimination. The three-person panel consists of: Buddhist monk from the Saffron Monks Network, Pandavimsa from Shwe Taung Monastery; High Court lawyer Kyaw Nyein; and Buddhist monk and leader o...

Aung San Suu Kyi at a World Economic Forum BBC debate in Naypyidaw in June 2013. (Photo: Simon Roughneen / The Irrawaddy) By SANAY LIN & SIMON ROUGHNEEN  Irrawaddy News November 28, 2013  RANGOON — U Wirathu, the Mandalay-based monk who heads the “969” anti-Muslim movement, believes that democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi would not be a good president for Burma. “I wish [President] Thein Sein to be re-elected. If he refuses to go for the post, my vote will go to Shwe Mann,” said the controversial monk—whose speeches and sermons are said to have fueled anti-Muslim violence across Burma since June 2012. Both Suu Kyi, the former dissident and now opposition parliamentarian, and Shwe Mann, a former No. 3 in the old military junta, have stated their interest in becoming president after the 2015 parliamentary elections. Incumbent Thein Sein, Shwe Mann’s Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) colleague, has not said whether or not he will put his name for...