The Stateless Rohingya Blog

Part of a 121-strong group of Rohingya boatpeople, including six women and two children, arrive at a shelter in Punteuet in Aceh province on February 27, 2013, after being found adrift by fishermen around 25 km from the coast of Sumatra. (AFP PHOTO) 200 nabbed ahead of 'migrating season' THE authorities are stepping up measures to prevent the illegal inflow of Rohingya from neighbouring Myanmar.  Illegal entries by members of this ethnic group usually soar between November and April every year - after the monsoon period has ended.  The Rohingya - who are Muslim - have been fleeing for years from Myanmar's western Rakhine State, where they face severe repression in most facets of daily life by a government that regards them as "Bengalis" from Bangladesh.  "Security agencies have estimated that more than 10,000 Rohingya people will arrive in Thailand via Ranong and nearby provinces between next month and April next year," Deputy Rano...

An elderly Muslim Rohingya man outside his tent at the Dabang Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp, located on the outskirts of the city of Sittwe on October 10, 2012. (file photo) By Nurul Islam The Rakhine State (historically known as Arakan), is one of seven ethnic minority states which were formed under the constitution of 1974. The Rohingya Muslim population is mostly concentrated in the three northern townships: Maungdaw, Buthidaung and Rathedaung. The Rohingyas speak a Bengali dialect similar to what is spoken in the Chittagong region of Bangladesh, mixed primarily with words from the Urdu, Hindi and Arabic languages, but also from the Bama and English languages. The first Muslims who settled in this region were believed to be Arab mariners and traders that arrived on the Rakhine coast in the 8th and 9th centuries. Other Muslims who came to the area in later centuries include Persians, Moghuls, Turks, Pathans and Bengalis. During the British colonial period from 18...

A Rohingya shows scars from a wound he says was inflicted by kidnappers  Photo by phuketwan.com By Chutima Sidasathian and Alan Morison October 12, 2014 TAKUAPA: Fifty-three boatpeople captured north of Phuket have made remarkable allegations that they were unwilling travellers from Bangladesh, kidnapped one by one by gangs and forced onto a fishing boat by human traffickers. If the claims are authenticated, then the exodus of the stateless Rohingya down Thailand's Andaman Sea coast from Burma and Bangladesh is now being exploited by brutal mercenaries, interested only in the profit that can be made from selling people. Thailand's Ministry of Social Development and Human Security is applying to a court in the town of Takuapa, north of Phuket, on Sunday to have the 53 boatpeople declared victims of human trafficking.  A declaration by the court would prevent local police quickly deporting the group as illegal migrants and oblige officers to investigate ...

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...