Buddhists in Myanmar torch Muslim homes and shops

Source huffing post, 25 Aug

HTAN GONE, Myanmar — Members of a 1,000-strong Buddhist mob torched dozens of homes and shops in northwestern Myanmar following rumors that a Muslim man tried to sexually assault a young woman, officials and witnesses said, as the country was once again gripped by sectarian violence.

The rioters, who sang the country's national anthem as they rampaged, dispersed after security forces arrived early Sunday, shooting into the air. No injuries were reported.

The hours-long riot in Htan Gone village, located 16 kilometers (10 miles) south of the town of Kantbalu in the region of Sagaing, began late Saturday after a crowd surrounded a police station, demanding that the suspect in the attempted assault be handed over, a police officer told The Associated Press. The officer requested anonymity because he did not have the authority to speak to reporters.

State television reported that about 42 houses and 15 shops were burned and destroyed – most belonging to Muslims.

The predominantly Buddhist nation of 60 million has been grappling with sectarian violence since the country's military rulers handed over power to a nominally civilian government in 2011.

The unrest – which has killed more than 250 people and left 140,000 others displaced – began last year in the western state of Rakhine, where nationalist Buddhists accuse the Rohingya Muslim community of illegally entering the country and encroaching on their land. The violence, on a smaller scale but still deadly, spread earlier this year to other parts of the country, fueling deep-seeded prejudices against the Islamic minority and threatening Myanmar's fragile transition to democracy.

Almost all of the victims have been Muslims, often attacked as security forces stood by.

The Information Ministry said the latest round of violence was triggered by a report that a Muslim man attempted to sexually assault a Buddhist woman on her way home from work.

At its height, up to 1,000 people were rampaging through Htan Gone village, the ministry said.

"People descended on our village with swords and spears, and sang the national anthem and began destroying shops and burned houses," said Aung San, a 48-year-old Muslim man whose house was burned. "Police shouted at the mob to disperse, but did not take any serious action."

Aung San, who lives with his parents, who are in their 70s, said his family had to flee when the mob burned their house down.

"We hid my parents and two sisters in a cemetery before the mob burned our house, and we fled later," he said. He and his family were taking refuge Sunday at a Muslim school.

Myint Naing, an opposition lawmaker who represents constituents in Kantbalu, was outraged by the latest violence. He said Muslims and Buddhists have lived side-by-side in the area for many years.

"There is a mosque in almost every village in our township and we live a peaceful co-existence," he said as he headed to the scene, adding that at least one mosque was burned down in the violence.

"I cannot understand why the authorities were unable to control the crowd when it originally started," he said.

Muslims In Sagaing Division Are Under Attack By Buddhists Mobs

Source RB, 24 Aug

Kanbalu, Sagaing – The Muslims in Htan Gone, Kanbalu Township in the Sagaing Division are under attacks by local Buddhist mobs according to locals.

It is unclear as to why the violence started, but it is not unusual in Myanmar, as the Muslims in several townships have been attacked by Buddhist mobs since March 2013. This has become far too routine after the violence took place in Arak...an State in 2012.

RB News has received reports from locals that the monks and the Buddhist mobs have surrounded the mosque in Htan Gone since 9:30 pm local time. Although the situation was extremely tense the mosque hasn't yet been attacked.

However, there have been about seven Muslim shops that were destroyed by the mobs and six Muslim homes that have been burnt down by the mobs. Additionally a chicken farm was also burnt down.

The military and local police are surrounding the nearby mosque to observe the situation. However, it can't be said that the mosque would be safe seeing as how the security forces are constantly near the place where the violence take place and they never show any effort to stop the violence against Muslims.

Earlier in the day the telephone landlines and mobile phones were working properly but the lines became incommunicado after the crowds appeared in front of the mosque. The locals said the crowd was about 200 and now growing to somewhere around 500 in all.

Although the fire brigade came the mobs didn't allow them to enter the area of the conflict.

UN envoy says Myanmar failed to protect him in attack

Source NZyahoonews, 22 Aug

YANGON (AFP) - The UN's rights envoy on Myanmar Wednesday slammed the nation's government for failing to protect him when his convoy came under attack in a town reeling from religious unrest.

"The state has to protect me as a responsibility... This did not happen. The state failed to protect me," Tomas Ojea Quintan, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights, told reporters at the end of his 10 day visit to the country.

No one is thought to have been injured in the incident, which occurred on August 19 in the town of Meiktila, central Myanmar, where anti-Muslim violence in March left at least 44 dead.

In a statement the UN envoy said his vehicle "was descended upon by a crowd of around 200 people who proceeded to punch and kick the windows and doors of the car while shouting abuse".

He said the incident forced him to abandon plans to visit a local camp, where some 1,600 displaced Muslims are sheltering.

"The fear that I felt during this incident, being left totally unprotected by the nearby police, gave me an insight into the fear residents would have felt when being chased down by violent mobs during the violence last March," he said.

He reiterated reports of security forces failing to stop the March unrest, saying "police allegedly stood by as angry mobs beat, stabbed and burned" their victims to death.

Attacks against Muslims -- who make up an estimated four percent of Myanmar's population -- have exposed deep fractures in the Buddhist-majority nation and cast a shadow over its emergence from army rule.

The watchdog Physicians for Human Rights on Tuesday warned that Myanmar risked "catastrophic" levels of conflict, including "potential crimes against humanity and/or genocide" if authorities failed to stem anti-Muslim hate speech and a culture of impunity around the clashes.

Riots in Meiktila, sparked by an argument in a gold shop and the brutal murder of a Buddhist monk, saw Buddhist mobs torch whole Muslim areas in violence that spread to other parts of the country.

The victims included more than 20 students and teachers of a Muslim school on the outskirts of Meiktila, who were set upon by armed men and beaten and burned to death, according to witnesses interviewed by AFP.

Graphic video footage given to AFP by activists shows an embankment next to the school turned into a killing ground, watched over by uniformed police.

After the March violence, Quintana said the reluctance of security forces to crack down on the unrest suggested a possible state link to the fighting -- a claim rejected by the government.

The unrest followed two outbreaks of conflict in western Rakhine state in June and October last year that left around 200 people dead, mainly Rohingya Muslims who are seen by many in Myanmar as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

A sense of deep distrust between Muslims, Buddhists and the security forces pervades the state, which Quintana visited at the start of his trip.

At least one person was killed and around 10 injured earlier this month in a violent clash in a camp for dispossessed Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine that broke out just days before Quintana toured the area.

In June, five Muslims including three Rohingya women were killed by security forces who opened fire during disputes in two separate incidents in camps in Rakhine.

Invisible Pakistanis: Neither here nor there

Source tribune, 20 Aug

A Burmese Muslim woman. PHOTO: AFP

"I've been in this country for over 30 years," says Muhammad* quietly, speaking with the articulate poise of a man schooled at a convent in Rangoon, Myanmar. "And yet, I am still not a Pakistani citizen."

Muhammad is not alone. Following the year 1962, Pakistan's sprawling urban centres were freshly peopled by throngs of Muslim families from urban Myanmar, on the run from discriminatory communist reforms in their home country.

Five decades later, these migrants stay on as unregistered citizens – they are neither Pakistani, nor Burmese.

Out with the Muslims

As Pakistan crossed economic milestones under Ayub Khan's regime in the 1960s, Muslims in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, endured unprecedented difficulties through military dictator Ne Win's communist reforms.

Migrants relate that their properties were held, factories seized and that they were disadvantaged in universities and the job market.

"My father was a rich and famous marble trader in Burma," relates Shirley, 50, who insists on keeping the Christian name she had at the Rangoon convent school she attended. "His offices and factories were seized by the military. Discrimination was seeping in, even before Ne Win."

Eaters of insects

And yet, in many ways, the move to Pakistan for many Muslim Burmese proved to be a case of falling out of the frying pan and diving head-first into the fire.

Most who landed in Pakistan belonged to Muslim trading families, and they eyed the growing economy of the fledgling Islamic state in the West as consisting of their 'Muslim brothers.'

"But the 'Muslim brothers' thought we were Burmese Buddhists pretending to be Muslims," says Muhammad, who migrated to Karachi from Thingankyung, a city in the suburbs of Rangoon.

"Our food was different. We cooked seafood like crabs, shrimps and lobsters. In the 1960s, Pakistanis thought these were insects that smelled nasty when cooked. They did not know that crab soup and Burmese Khao Suay would go on to be the most sought after delicacies in 2013!"

Moreover, difficulty of conversing in Urdu did little to help Muslim migrants from Burma.

"We were at ease with English and the Burmese language, but naturally spoke Urdu like a Chinese or Japanese would," says Shirley. "Because of our [poor] Urdu, our food and our liberal values, many in Karachi thought we weren't Muslims at all."

Where are the laws?

According to Muhammad, there is a great dearth of assimilation laws in Pakistan.

"Unlike what happens in a country like Canada, Burmese Muslims in Pakistan cannot become naturalised citizens since there are no laws of the like," he states.

However, Director General Immigrations and Passports Jalal Sikandar says nationality laws vary from country to country, depending on specific conditions.

"Of course, Canada has room for more people. Therefore, the procedure to obtain nationality is much easier," explains Sikandar. "In Pakistan, we do have laws, but they are more tedious as we can't have too many Pakistani nationals."

A Burmese migrant, he says, can attain nationality if he/she marries a Pakistani.

Into the workforce

Salwa*, a primary school teacher, expands upon another grievance faced by Burmese settlers.

Academic certificates received from Burmese institutes are not recognised in Pakistan, which makes it difficult to take up jobs, especially in specialised fields.

"As [our] certificates are written in the Burmese script, no one in Pakistani government offices can read them," says Salwa.

However, the Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan says degrees received from Myanmar are recognised.

"I have confirmed this from relevant officers," states Murtaza Noor, a spokesman for the HEC, confidently. "As per the current law, the commission can prepare equivalence certificates for graduates of institutes in Myanmar."

In this vein, Salwa does admit that upon migration, educated Burmese Muslims were quickly assimilated into the growing urban workforce, despite not having 'legal' degrees.

"I'm not talking about the Rohingya community, who are different. I'm talking about us, the educated, liberal Muslims of urban Burma," she says. "When my family migrated to Karachi, Pakistan's booming economy had a lot of room for women who were willing to work and spoke good English, legal certificates or not."

*Names changed to protect identity

Published in The Express Tribune, August 20^th, 2013.

One Dead And Over 20 missing After Boat Sank In Naf River

Source RB news, August 15 

Teknaf, Bangladesh – A boat left from Maungdaw Township, Arakan State on it's way to Teknaf, Bangladesh sank in Naf River today. Reportedly one person died and over 20 missing. 

This evening a boat left from Mingalar Gyi village, Maungdaw Township to Teknaf, Bangladesh. Reportedly the boat sank before arriving at Teknaf. Normally the boat would have the capacity for 10 people but the transporter loaded 25 people onboard to get more money. A Rohingya in Teknaf told RB News that the boat sank because it had been overloaded. 

The transporter of the boat is a Rakhine man, U Thein Oo who is a resident of Bangladesh and Myanmar. He owns a restaurant in Maungdaw Township. From 25 persons on boat, only one woman is dead and three surviving people were found near the shore of Teknaf. The remaining 21 persons are missing. 

The people on-board the boat were on their way to Bangladesh for business and to visit. All of them are Rohingyas according to locals. 

A Rohingya said that two transporters are operating a boat in Mingalar Gyi, transporting people for business. One is a Rohingya man, Abaas and another is a Rakhine man U Thein Oo. Today U Thein Oo did the operations of the boat. Although placing 25 people in the small boat is far too heavy for the vessel, U Thien Oo overcrowded the boat and placed all 25 lives at risk.

A Muslim House and Five Boats Burnt Down by 969 Network in ‪Thandwe‬

Source RB, 14 Aug

Thandwe, Arakan – A ‪Kaman‬ Muslim house and 5 boats were set fire by members of the 969 network in Myo Taung quarter. This is in the Thandwe Township of Arakan State. It happened last night at 11 pm according to locals there.

A house and two fishing boats belonging to U Mya Win who lives in Anawyahta Street, were burnt. ...The value of the two boats is at about 16 million kyat. The 969 group also set fire to two fishing boats and two fishnets owned by U Sanay Aung. He lives at the corner of Anawyahta Street and Marga Street. The value of his boats is about 12 million kyat. The fifth fishing boat that was burnt belonged to U Kyaw Tin. He lives in downtown Thandwe. The value of his boat is unknown.

Rohingya men who were shot by the police during a riot on Friday rest in Dapaing district clinic, outside of Sittwe

Source trust-org, 12 Aug

 

Rohingya men who were shot by the police during a riot on Friday rest in Dapaing district clinic, outside of Sittwe, August 11, 2013. Attempts to bring stability to Myanmar's strategic northwest Rakhine State could be unravelling after police opened fire on Rohingya Muslims for the third time in two months, reviving tensions in a region beset by religious violence last year. Villages outside the state capital Sittwe remain volatile after a dispute over custody of a dead Rohingya quickly escalated into a day of clashes on Friday in which police raked Rohingya crowds with gunfire, according to witnesses. Picture taken August 11, 2013. REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun (MYANMAR - Tags: POLITICS CIVIL UNREST RELIGION)

At least five dead following flare-up in Sittwe

Source mmtimes, 9 Aug

Tensions have flared in Rakhine State's Sittwe, with at least five people having been killed in a series of incidents sparked by the fatal bashing of a fisherman by police.

Two fishermen in the village of Aun Daw Ji were reportedly beaten, with one bludgeoned to death and the other left injured. The incident took place in a village adjacent to IDP camps where Eid celebrations were in full swing.

Further violence was sparked when news of the attacks got out and a mob of IDP camp residents rushed the police shortly after 11am, who then opened fire on the crowd killing at least four.

Rohingya spokesman Aung Win witnessed the incident, and said that some camp residents went on to torch the police station as well as several homes.

Aung Win said he did not know if the police action was part of a deliberate clampdown on celebrations for the Muslim festival of Eid, as has been rumoured.  
 
He voiced concerns that the death toll from the incident may have been underestimated, saying he had not seen violence of this magnitude since the bloodshed of June last year.

"I am worried because the police hid some of the dead bodies and they didn't send all the injured people to hospital.

"I saw them put about 15 to 20 people on a truck and arrest them and I am worried they will hold them without (proper reason)."

He also said people trying to leave the village found themselves subject to attacks.
 
"After 2pm the women were trying to flee the village and the police came and beat the women," he said.

A reporter on the ground said security presence in the area had been stepped up significantly since the incident.
 
The Myanmar Times spoke with a driver who enters the camp with NGO workers on a regular basis said the atmosphere on Thursday had been particularly good as celebrations began for Eid.

"Everyone seemed very happy and it felt safe. I  checked with my contacts in the camp before I went in yesterday and they said it was all good so I was surprised when I heard this had happened this morning."

It appears the situation there is still not entirely stable, with reports emerging of Rohingya refugees chanting for the release of detained activist U Kyaw Hla Aung, and police and army firing into the crowd.

Arrests were also reportedly made at the Baw Du Pha camp.

Speaker addresses Rangoon University

Source Parliament, 1 Aug

 

01 August 2013

In a speech at Rangoon University today, the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, praised the welcome change of atmosphere brought about by recent reforms, but urged that reform go much further and deeper.

He said:

"A free, peaceful and democratic future for your country can be built on these foundations – the release of political prisoners, legislative and constitutional reform, a nationwide peace process involving a political dialogue leading to a federal system in which equal rights are protected and diversity is celebrated"

The Speaker was addressing Rangoon University as part of a working visit with other MPs to Burma. The visit, which includes a meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi and President Thein Sein, marks the next stage of support by the UK House of Commons for Burma's democratic journey. Since Aung San Suu Kyi was warmly welcomed to Parliament in 2012 and provided an historic address to both Houses in Westminster Hall, the House of Commons has received two delegations from the Rangoon parliament. In addition, staff of the House have been working directly with colleagues in Rangoon on enhancing scrutiny.

Full Speech: Mr Speaker's speech to Rangoon University, Burma ( PDF 134 KB)

Background to the visit can be found in the MP Delegation to Burma news story