The Stateless Rohingya Blog

Police stop a three-wheeled motorbike taxi carrying Muslim Rohingya in Maungdaw township on February 1. (Si Thu Lwin/The Myanmar Times) Maungdaw, Arakan State:  Burmese Border Guard Police (BGP) personnel produced 20 Rohingyas including four females to Maungdaw court on September 29 for remand, where the court granted seven days, according to an officer from court who denied to be named. “Now, they are kept in four miles riot police headquarters for more interrogations.” BGP personnel went to near Bawli Bazar villages and arrested about nearly 20 villagers including females and males for not taking part in so-called population data collection or census since September 14, said, Amin, a local trader from the local. Some of the arrestees are identified as—Maulana Nurul Islam (65); Hafez Abul Alam (25), son of Nurul Islam; Lalu (45), son of Mozer Meah; Abu Alam (43), son of Kadir Hussain; and Ms Tahera Begum (45), wife of Mohamed  Siddique. After arrest, all the arrest...

A woman, whose new born baby just died, sits on a chair at a refugee camp on May 11, 2014 in Sittwe, Burma. 150,000 Rohingya IDP (internally displaced people) are currently imprisoned in refugee camps outside of Sittwe in Rakhine State in Western Myanmar.Getty Images By Gianluca Mezzofiore IBTimes Myanmar has laid out a controversial plan to offer citizenship to Rohingya Muslims, described by the UN as the world's most persecuted minority, in exchange for registering their identities as Bengali. Foreign minister Wunna Maung Lwin said in an address to the UN general assembly that an action plan will be launched soon and requested the international community to provide development assistance in the Rakhine state, where most of the country's 1.1 million Rohingya live, stateless and in apartheid-like conditions. "We are working for peace, stability, harmony and development of all people in Rakhine state," he said. But critics of the plan claim the...

Myanmar police officers stand guard near barricades as they provide security in Thandwe, Rakhine State, western Myanmar. AP By KPN  September 29, 2014 Maungdaw, Arakan State: Creating new method, the Burmese Border Guard Police (BGP) arrested six innocent villagers from Maungdaw north on September 27, over the allegation that they had linked with Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO), a rebellion group of Burmese Government, Shoffee (not real name) , a village leader preferring not to be named.  “On September 25, in the morning, a group of army went to Burma- Bangladesh border and made two separate small groups and fought each other group about 15 minutes pretending as they met a suspected armed group at the border.” On September 27, Radio Free Asia (RFA) released a news about a fight between BGP and a suspected armed group on September 26, at the Burma-Bangladesh border, nearby pillar Nos. 46-47, about 15 minutes but, there were no casualties in both sides. As a r...

Radical Myanmarese monk Ashin Wirathu A radical Myanmarese monk is adopting new measures to intensify a hate campaign against the Rohingya Muslims in the Southeast Asian country. Speaking at an indoor stadium in the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, on Sunday, leader of the 969 Movement, Ashin Wirathu, announced a partnership with a hardline Sri Lankan Buddhist group to build a front against Muslims. "Today, Buddhism is in danger. We need hands to be firmly held together if we hear alarm bells ringing," he said, adding, "I'd like to announce that 969 and I will" cooperate "with Sri Lanka's Bodu Bala Sena to protect Buddhists all round the world." The remarks come as thousands of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims could face indefinite detention under a new government plan that requires them to either accept ethnic reclassification and register as Bengalis or be detained. Under the draft plan, authorities in the restive Rakhine State wil...

URGENT PRESS STATEMENT 29 September 2014 Dear Chief Editors, Myanmar Ethnic Rohingya Human Rights Organization Malaysia (MERHROM) is deeply concerned on the Myanmar government’s plan to grant citizenship to the ethnic minority Rohingya as it clearly contradicts with the International law and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).  The plan by the Myanmar government clearly shows that the government continuously wants to eliminate Rohingya from Myanmar. This is part of their ethnic cleansing policy towards ethnic Rohingya. This is clearly GENOCIDE against ethnic minority Rohingya. In the recent months the Myanmar government has banned the term Rohingya. The term Rohingya cannot be used anymore in Myanmar. The act of the Myanmar government draws lots of criticism from the human rights group and the International community.  As a result some United Nations agencies working in Myanmar have avoided the word Rohingya because it angers officials...

By Ei Ei Toe Lwin Myanmar Times September 29, 2014 Rakhine State officials insist a citizenship scrutiny project in Myebon township has not been suspended, despite media reports to the contrary and protests from local Rakhine residents. Citizenship scrutinizing card for Rohingya as Bengali+Kaman More than 1000 people have applied for citizenship through the pilot project. Of these, 209 were granted full or naturalised citizenship according to 1982 Citizenship Law at a ceremony on September 22, including 40 identified as Bengalis and 169 as Kaman. However, Eleven Media reported the program hads been stopped because of concerns that some Muslims were carrying fake documents identifying them as Kaman, an officially recognised Muslim ethnic group from Rakhine State. U Maung Maung Than, a director general in the Ministry of Immigration and Population, said the reports were incorrect. “The program is continuing,” he said. “The regional government is impleme...

The radical Buddhist Monk Ashin Wirathu of Myanmar By Daya Gamage  Asian Tribune News Analysis September 27, 2014 Washington, D.C. While the United States Department of State is deeply concerned about public discourse of a section of Buddhist clergy in Sri Lanka of its radicalism toward the Muslim minorities, and official pronouncement by the American Embassy in Colombo about the radical Buddhist organization called the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS- Buddhist Power Force) accusing it of instrumental in attacking Muslim places of worship and business institutions, it will be an added concern for the US officials here in Washington when they learn the arrival of a radical Buddhist monk from Myanmar to attend a BBS-organized even in Sri Lanka on September 28. It has been reported that the radical and outspoken Buddhist monk from Myanmar Ashin Wirathu iis expected to attend the BBS Great Sangha Council meeting on 28. Time magazine, with venerable Ashin Wirathu on their...