The Stateless Rohingya Blog

The growing persecution of the Rohingya minority in Myanmar. By Vanessa Thevathasan The Diplomat October 25, 2014 The Rohingya are one of the world’s most persecuted ethnic minorities and are internationally recognized as de jure stateless. As Myanmar struggles to form a democratic state during a period of transition after decades of totalitarian military rule, the Rohingya are receiving renewed attention. Vanessa Thevathasan recently spoke with members of  The Stateless Rohingya  about the  plight of the Rohingya  and regional responsibility for their human rights. Tell us who you are and the aims of your organization, The Stateless Rohingya.   My name is Mohammed Rafique and I was stateless for my whole life until I was resettled in Ireland along with 78 members of the Rohingya from a Bangladesh refugee camp by the government of Ireland in 2009. Rohingya Community Ireland  is a community organization that focuses on the development of...

By MYARF & Rohingya Eye ׀  RvisionTV October 25, 2014 Maungdaw, Arakan State : Myanmar’s Border Guard Police brutally beat up and killed a Rohingya Religious Scholar in northern Maungdaw Township on Thursday night, according to a reliable source in the region. The victim is identified to be the 40-year-old Mv Hussein Ahmed (son of) Zahir Ahmed hails from the western hamlet of Kyi Kan Pyin (also called Khawar Bil) village, northern Maungdaw. “The Myanmar Border Guard Police known as BGP frequently raids and besiege Rohingya villages. They arrest random people under false and arbitrary accusation of having links with *RSO. Then, they torture and kill the people in the detentions. They commit extrajudicial killings with impunity. Mv Hussein hails from Kyi Kan Pyin village was on a visit to his sister’s home in Kyauk Pyin Seik (also known as Naari Bil) in northern Maungdaw on October 23. Unfortunately, the BGP and around 30 Rakhine extremists raided the villag...

In this photo taken Jan.1, 2013, Rohingya refugees sit in a boat as they are intercepted by Thai authorities off the sea in Phuket, southern Thailand. (AP Photo) YANGON, Myanmar (AP) A growing sense of desperation is fueling a mass exodus of Rohingya Muslims from western Myanmar, with at least 8,000 members of the long-persecuted minority fleeing by boat in the last two weeks, according to residents and a leading expert. Chris Lewa, director of the nonprofit Rohingya advocacy group Arakan Project, said an average of 900 people per day have been piling into cargo ships parked off Rakhine state since Oct. 15. Myanmar, a predominantly Buddhist nation of 50 million, has an estimated 1.3 million Rohingya. Though many of their families arrived from neighboring Bangladesh generations ago, almost all have been denied Myanmar citizenship. In the last two years, attacks by Buddhist mobs have left hundreds dead and 140,000 trapped in camps, and have undermined Myanmar's transi...

By  World Bulletin October 24, 2014 Record numbers of Muslim Rohingya flee western Myanmar after government launches crackdown. Unprecedented numbers of Muslim Rohingya have been leaving Myanmar on boats for Thailand and Malaysia following a campaign of arrests, a leading NGO said Friday. "In one week we have seen 8,000 Rohingya leaving northern Rakhine state -- the amount of people who left the region per month in 2013," Chris Lewa, head of the Arakan Project, told Anadolu Agency. Last week’s flight is believed to be the largest since violence erupted between the Rohingya minority and Buddhists in western Myanmar two years ago. "Myanmar police let the boats come to the estuary of the Naf river in daylight and have even stopped asking for money from the Rohingya before they embark," Lewa added, referring to the water frontier between Myanmar and Bangladesh. "It looks as if it is planned." While the number of Rohingya escaping...

By Harun Yahya Arab News October 25, 2014 Despite the atrocities being committed against the Muslims of Arakan, better known as Rohingyas, the international community has so far done nothing to protect these people. The world appears to be sitting on the fence, as these people are being systematically persecuted. This minority Muslim community in Myanmar — termed the most persecuted people living on the face of earth — has been turned into refugees in their own country. The Rohingyas are a people with no civil rights and from time to time subjected to indiscriminate violence. The world became slightly acquainted with these people following the violent attacks and acts of arson of 2012.  Last month, the government of Myanmar submitted a plan to the United Nations appeared to be aimed at restoring peace, ensuring justice and creating communal harmony. Several countries welcomed and approved the plan thinking that Myanmar was ready to roll back its policy of discrim...

By Deutsche Welle October 24, 2014 Myanmar is increasingly under fire over its treatment of the Rohingya minority in the Rakhine state. The International Crisis Group stresses the importance of creating a new sense of identity for the community. Myanmar's Rakhine State has a history of extreme poverty, under-development, as well as intercommunal and inter-religious conflict between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and the minority Rohingya - a Muslim group not recognized as citizens in Myanmar. Several outbreaks of violence since 2012 have claimed the lives of hundreds and left some 140,000 people homeless, most of them Rohingya. And with the country moving closer to national elections at the end of next year, tensions are likely to rise. Against this backdrop, the International Crisis Group (ICG) urged the Myanmar government in a new 45-page report to clarify the legal status of the Rohingya and find way to create a new sense of national identity embracing the country's cu...

In this Aug. 14, 2014 photo, Shwe Maung, an ethnic Rohingya member of Myanmar’s Parliament who represents Rohingya Muslims of Rakhine State, poses for a photo with a brown, tassled fez-like cap on a side table next to him in Yangon, Myanmar. (AP) By Matthew Pennington October 24, 2014 WASHINGTON (AP) — An influential Washington think tank is criticizing Myanmar's government for presiding over a "humanitarian catastrophe" in western Rakhine state and doing little to track down perpetrators of Buddhist-on-Muslim violence around the country. Those criticisms come in a very mixed assessment by the Center for Strategic and International Studies of the situation in Myanmar, three years after it began a historic transition to democracy from decades of oppressive and ruinous military rule. The centrist think tank, which has the ear of the Obama administration, visited Myanmar in August and issued its report Wednesday. President Barack Obama, who counts U.S. ...