The Stateless Rohingya Blog

Early solution to refugee issue stressed  Bangladesh has reiterated its position over Myanmar refugee issue and mentioned that it considers the voluntary repatriation of the refugees to their homes in Rakhine State as the only durable solution to the protracted refugee situation in Cox's Bazar, reports UNB. Newly appointed ambassador and Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the United Nations Offices in Geneva and Vienna M Shameem Ahsan said this while addressing the annual meeting of UNHCR's governing Executive Committee in Geneva Wednesday, said a foreign ministry media release in Dhaka Thursday. He alluded to the positive momentum generated by the recently concluded Foreign Office Consultations between Bangladesh and Myanmar in Dhaka. The envoy stressed the need for gearing up the momentum to resume voluntary repatriation of the Myanmar refugees from Bangladesh. On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Bangladesh's attachment with the United N...

An elderly Rohingya Muslim woman sits outside her tent at a camp in Rakhine state. (FILE photo) By Dr. Habib Siddiqui October 03, 2014 The Rohingya people of Myanmar (formerly Burma) who mostly live in the western part – the Rakhine (formerly Arakan) state, bordering Bangladesh, are undoubtedly the most persecuted people on earth. Denied citizenship in the Buddhist majority country, the Rohingyas have simply become the most unwanted people in our planet. The nearby Bangladesh does not want the persecuted Rohingyas to settle there either. In desperate attempts to save their lives, many Rohingyas have become now the ‘boat people’ of our time! Who would have thought that in our time, some 68 years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted by the world community to guide its behaviors and actions we would see so much of intolerance and persecution of peoples based on their race or ethnicity? There are 30 Articles of the UDHR, starting with...

People shop at a market in Maungdaw, northern Rakhine state June 6, 2014.CREDIT: REUTERS/SOE ZEYA TUN By Jared Ferrie  Reuters UK Human rights groups condemned on Friday a Myanmar government plan that could force thousands of minority Rohingya Muslims into detention camps indefinitely if they do not qualify for citizenship. The U.S. and some other embassies in Myanmar had raised their concern with the government about some aspects of the plan, a U.S. official told Reuters. Most of Myanmar's 1.1 million Rohingya Muslims live in apartheid-like conditions in Rakhine state on the west coast of the predominantly Buddhist country, and almost 140,000 are displaced after deadly clashes with ethnic Rakhine Buddhists in 2012. The government has refused to grant most Rohingya citizenship and refers to them as Bengali, which implies they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh despite having lived in Myanmar for generations. The Rakhine State Action Plan will requir...

Setting fire to Rohingya villages- an act that was carried out by Rakhine & Security forces. By C.R. Abrar The Daily Star October 2, 2014 QUITE predictably, the 2014 national census of Myanmar has come back to haunt the ethnic Rohingyas.  Media reports inform that the Myanmarese government has devised a new plan under which members of the Rohingya community would be given the thorny choice: accept ethnic reclassification and the prospect of citizenship or be detained.  Under the new arrangement the community members would be required to identify themselves as 'Bengalis' (and not as 'Rohingyas') or face detention. Plans are underway to “construct temporary camps in required numbers for those who refuse to be registered and those without adequate documents.” The new decree is being proposed at a time when most of Myanmar's 1.3 million Rohingya population, particularly those in western Arakan, has been living in what has been described as “apar...

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...