The Stateless Rohingya Blog

By Ibrahim Shah  Burma Times April 2014 Taung Bazar, Buthidaung - Today in Taung Bazaar, Buthidaung Township at around 10:00 AM, the Captain Tun Naing (from Regiment 552 located near Thin Ga Net village) seized a motor bike belonging to Mohamed Reyas s/o Mv. Mohamed Foyas, aged 20 from Kwe Mura para of Mee Gyaung Zay village tract,a Rohingya Arabic student. Then the said Captain and two of his subordinates beaten the student up severely without any reason. The victim has no doors to complain against the military. These sorts of abuses are going on almost every single day. The systematic persecution against Rohingya by government officials and its adopted Rakhine Buddhist miscreants have been taking place increasingly day by day in western Burma. The more the international community advocates to stop such state-sponsored persecution against Rohingya, the more the Rohingya have been suffering and not even hardly few sympathy from Buddhist communities for them, said s...

By  Hereward Holland Al Jazeera April 14, 2014 Muslim Rohingya are excluded from political representation as a result of not being counted. Myanmar's million-plus Muslim Rohingya population doesn't officially exist on government records. Branded "Bengali" and considered illegal immigrants, they've been living under systematic discrimination since sectarian violence erupted in 2012 in the coastal Rakhine state. In the past six months,  resentment  of aid groups has been building among some Buddhists because of charities' perceived preferential treatment of the Rohingya, who make up the vast majority of those displaced by the recent unrest. Many aid groups that once provided life-giving support to the Rohingya's squalid camps have either been banned or forced to flee, their compounds ransacked by Buddhist mobs. The mobs gathered after a UN-backed national census, the country's first in 30 years. The headcount officially began on ...

By Sindhi Khan | Maungdaw, Arakan State April 15, 2014 Rvision TV The Police members of anti-Crime Squad such as Inspector Incharge Thaung Tun, Sergeant Hla Myint and Corporal Maung Chay @Than Tun some of the longest serving police officers in Maungdaw Police Station. Besides, they have become the richest police officers in town through money extortion from local Rohingyas. Though illegal activities such as abuse of power and money extortion have been reported and mentioned in media various times, they remain untransferred from the station, retained their same ranks and posts, no any other sorts of action have been taken against them. According to a police officer in the station, they have been able to escape legal actions because they have contacts with the higher officers and regularly bribe them to escape actions. These police officers have recently stepped up extorting money from Rohingyas saying “there is a complaint against you. You are involved in illegal business. Yo...

Nori Slum lies on his bed in the Dar Paing camp in Rakhine state (photo by John Zaw) By John Zaw, Sittwe Myanmar UCA News April 14, 2014 Supplies aren't getting through and time is running out in Myanmar Nori Slum’s ribcage, already much too visible on his emaciated torso, rises and falls in rhythm with the hacking cough he developed a year ago. The 45-year-old developed tuberculosis last year, forcing him to be quarantined away from his family in their hut in the Dar Paing camp for displaced persons outside of Sittwe in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state. Many of the camp’s residents are dependent on the medicine provided by international aid groups, but Nori has gone more than a week without his. In late March aid organizations were forced to evacuate the region after orchestrated attacks on offices and equipment by Buddhist mobs angered at aid going to people like Nori Slum, a member of the Rohingya minority whom Rakhines believe to be illegal Bengali immig...

Myanmar polices walk along with census enumerators as they collect information at Thae Chaung village in Sittwe, Rakhine State, western Myanmar, Tuesday, April 01, 2014. — AP photo By Muhammad Zamir Financial Express BGD April 14, 2014 As Myanmar continues its efforts to roll back half-a-century of totalitarianism and usher in a comprehensive democratic process, controversy has found a new niche within its public realm. The latest nationwide census undertaken throughout Myanmar was initiated on an upbeat note. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) came forward to help the Myanmar government complete the much needed task. Frederick Okwayo, a census adviser, explained to the media that there was need for completion of the coding list of the 135 ethnic groups who are supposed to constitute the population of Myanmar. As indicated by Okwayo, such a census of the population was imperative 'for any planning - be it planning for basic education, planning for health ...

By SR Sittwe Sittwe (Akyab) | Sunday April 13, 2014 rvisiontv.com 8-month-old Supana Parveen is acutely suffering from an unidenttified fever. There is no clinic to cure her illness. (Photo: SR Sittwe)   We  have recently  reported you about  a heart-wrenching plight of a malaria-infected 8-month-old Rohingya baby boy called Sayed Noor . Yet, here is one more similar plight of a vulnerable Rohingya baby girl that has been acutely suffering from an unidentified fever since 10 th  April 2014. She is Supana Parveen, daughter of U Yunose and Daw Noor Aishah, living in the IDP camps of Thakkay Pyin (Sakki Fara) in Sittwe (Akyab) township, Arakan state. There is no hospital or proper clinic there after the expulsion of International Aid Groups. And she can’t be admitted to Sittwe General Hospital either because of the fear that Rakhine doctors and nurses at the hospital will kill her instead of curing her illness. She is now in a volunteer clinic at...

By Emanuel Stoakes The Independent UK April 11, 2014 This year looks set to be the most fraught in a long time for the already highly imperilled ethnic group       At the time of writing, Burma’s first census in over 30 years is drawing to a close. It was meant to have been the latest in a series of milestones affirming the nation’s steady progress toward democracy and away from its bitterly troubled past. Instead, it has become a high-profile fiasco; one that has underlined the burning issues that still trouble the country and threaten to drag it backwards. Chief among those issues is the plight of a persecuted Muslim ethnic minority in the country's western Rakhine state. Just prior to the start of the nation-wide population survey, a spokesman for the Burmese government announced that the ethnic group, who are stateless and regarded as illegal immigrants by both Myanmar and neighbouring Bangladesh, could not identify themselves by the name the...