The Stateless Rohingya Blog

By Joshua Carroll  October 11, 2014 Dozens of men from Myanmar’s persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority have been arrested and tortured because of alleged ties to a militant Islamic organization, according to a rights group. The Arakan Project, a Thailand-based group that documents abuses against the Rohingya, says one man has been tortured to death in Myanmar’s far north-west, near the border with Bangladesh. Authorities have rounded up at least 58 men in the last two weeks from several villages in the north of Rakhine state, according to figures compiled by the Arakan Project and seen by the Anadolu Agency . The wife of the dead man told the group she was forced to sign a statement that her husband died of natural causes. Last month, al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri announced plans to expand his terror network to include Myanmar. The recently arrested Rohingya men were accused of having ties to a group called the Rohingya Solidarity Organization, or RSO. ...

Moe Rue Husom, who also goes by Min Aung, shows his recently obtained green ID card, indicating that he is a naturalized citizen under Burma’s 1982 Citizenship Law. (Photo: JPaing / The Irrawaddy) The Irrawaddy October 10, 2014 MYEBON TOWNSHIP, Arakan State  — Similar to other camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Arakan State, tales of suffering are in no short supply here in Myebon, where the displaced have languished in hardscrabble living conditions for nearly two years. But these Rohingya Muslims have a little more hope than most. Here, at least, some members of the persecuted minority have had an opportunity that many others have not: the chance to receive government-issued ID cards, affording some of the rights of citizenship for the first time. All they have to do, the government says, is renounce any claim to an ethnic Rohingya identity. The Myebon IDP camp was selected by the government to pilot a national verification plan, the implica...

By Bill O’Toole Myanmar Times October 9, 2014 Less than two weeks after being convicted of rioting in a Sittwe court, Muslim community leader U Kyaw Hla Aung was released under a presidential amnesty on October 7. U Kyaw Hla Aung was arrested on July 15, 2013, following a clash in the Baw Du Pha IDP camp when a group of young Muslims refused to fill out an immigration department form that identified them as “Bengali”. The situation escalated to the point where the youths allegedly attacked several immigration police. Shortly afterward, U Kyaw Hla Aung was arrested and accused of inciting the group to attack the police. Many observers said the charges were directly related to U Kyaw Hla Aung’s longstanding political activism and legal assistance on behalf of detained Muslims in Rakhine State. While 3073 prisoners were freed on October 7, Yangon-based attorney U Robert Sann Aung said U Kyaw Hla Aung was one of just a handful who could be described as a “politic...

By Ibrahim Shah Burma Times Today( 8th October), it is reported from inside western Burma that on the night of 7th October a team of Border Guard Police of Burma (BGP) raided one Rohingya Islamic school situated at Maung Nama hamlet from Maungdaw district and arrested 8 Islamic scholars. The arrested scholars are detained in the head quarter of disbanded Nasaka department situated at Kyee Ken Pyin( Hawarbeel in Rohingylish), Maungdaw Township. Updated news for those Rohingya detainees who were detained on 26th and 27th September When their families went to BGP camp, they (BGP) responded that they (the detainees) were sent to Maungdaw police station. And, when they went there, Maungdaw police team said that they don’t know in fact where the detainees are kept.  Finally, 5 dead bodies of Rohingya people who were respectively detained by BGP on 26th and 27th September are found in river. According to internal source, it is learnt that these kinds of sudden ra...

By Aman Ullah October 08, 2014 On Burma attaining independence on 4th January 1948, it ceased to be a part of the British Commonwealth which it left of its own choice. However, at that time the inhabitants of the country consisted of persons of indigenous, mixed and foreign stock. Citizenship was partly defined by the Constitution thereby assuring citizenship rights to the indigenous and mixed races, but the task of defining citizenship more completely was left to the parliament. Laws were promulgated by the Parliament from time to time to define citizenship and to provide for its acquisition and anyone who was not a citizen was classified as a foreigner.  The “Residents of Burma Registration Act” was enact in 1949 as Act No.41, 1949 and a nine members committee was formed June 1950 to draft it’s rules in the name of ‘National Registration Rules Drafting Committee’ headed by U Ka Si, Secretary for Home Affairs. After finalizing the draft the committee submitted it to the Gover...

In this June 25, 2014 photo, Rohingya refugees beg for alms at Dar Paing main street, north of Sittwe, Rakhine State, Myanmar. Most Rohingya have lived under apartheid-like conditions in northern Rakhine for decades, with limited access to adequate health care, education and jobs, as well as restrictions on travel and the right to practice their faith. (AP Photo/ Gemunu Amarasinghe)  By Robin McDowell Associated Press October 8, 2014 Authorities sealed off villages for months in Myanmar's only Muslim-majority region and in some cases beat and arrested people who refused to register with immigration officials, residents and activists say, in what may be the most aggressive effort yet to compel Rohingya to identify themselves as migrants from neighboring Bangladesh. Immigration officials, border guards and members of the illegal-alien task force in the northern tip of Rakhine state — home to 90 percent of the country's 1.3 million Rohingya — said they were simp...

Abu Tahay, is a Rohingya Politician with the Chairman of Union Nationals Development Party in Myanmar. (Photo: Vitri Angreni) B y Vitri Angreni October  06, 2014 Myanmar's national government has reportedly drafted a plan that will give members of the persecuted Rohingya Muslim ethnic minority a choice: accept ethnic reclassification as ‘Bengalis and the prospect of citizenship, or be detained. Many Rohingya lost documents in the widespread violence, or have previously refused to register as "Bengalis" because they say the term implies they are illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh. Most of Myanmar's 1.1 million Rohingya already live in apartheid-like conditions in western Rakhine after deadly clashes with ethnic Rakhine Buddhists in 2012. Abu Tahay, is a Rohingya Politician with the Chairman of Union Nationals Development Party in Myanmar. He is visiting Jakarta and explained to Vitri Angreni why they reject the plan. Here is a transc...