15-day-old baby and four-month-old child among the 30 Rohingya refugees rescued from Indian boat by Sri Lanka

Source Dailymail, 30 April

• The Rohingya people are a Muslim Indo-Aryan community from the Rakhine State of Myanmar (Burma)
• The Rohingya are often described as one of the most persecuted minorities in the world
• Hundreds died in communal violence between Buddhists and Rohingya in 2012, further worsening their plight
• READ: Rohingya community crackdown begins in India 
• Indian security agencies believe these youths may be more prone to radicalisation than Indian Muslims
• See more news from India at www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome  

Sri Lanka's coastguard have detained an Indian boat which illegally entered the island's territorial waters and rescued 30 Rohingya refugees including 16 children who were on board, an official said.

The dhow operated by two Indians had entered Sri Lanka's northern waters after crossing the sea border, said navy spokesman Chaminda Walakuluge.

'The coastguard noticed that there were very small children on board and escorted the boat to a port and provided them with emergency assistance,' Walakuluge told AFP.

A Rohingya girl pictured in November 2016, in a refugee camp in Bangladesh

He said seven men, seven women and 16 children were on board, in addition to the two-man Indian crew who had been detained pending investigations.

'There was a 15-day-old baby and a four-month-old child on board,' Walakuluge said. 'We have taken them to port and provided food and medical attention.'

He said it appeared that the passengers had left India, where they had lived for about four years as refugees. They were handed over to local authorities to decide further action.

Investigators suspect that the crew were trying to bring the Rohingya to Sri Lanka.

The Muslim Rohingya in Myanmar's western state of Rakhine are denied citizenship and face brutal discrimination in the Buddhist-majority country.

Thousands have sought refuge in other countries in the region.

Four years ago Sri Lanka's navy rescued 138 refugees from Bangladesh and Myanmar whose boat had been drifting off Sri Lanka for over 10 days.

Myanmar's stateless Rohingya

The United Nations Human Rights Council last month agreed to send a fact-finding mission to Myanmar to investigate claims that police and soldiers carried out a bloody crackdown on the Rohingya in Rakhine.

More than 120,000 Rohingya have languished in grim displacement camps ever since bouts of religious violence between Muslims and Buddhists ripped through the state in 2012.

Most are not allowed to leave the squalid encampments, where they live in dilapidated shelters with little access to food, education and health care.

Virus-free. www.avg.com

Joint Letter to Governments on the UN Fact-Finding Mission on Burma

Source HRW, 27 April

Urge the Burmese Government to Allow Unfettered Access

Dear Your Excellency,

We, the undersigned, call on States, including the United States, United Kingdom and the member states of the European Union, Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to strongly encourage the Myanmar government to fully cooperate with the forthcoming Fact-Finding Mission into the human rights situation in Rakhine State, as well as active conflict areas in Kachin State and northern Shan State, as recently mandated by the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Following deadly attacks by a group later identified as the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) against three police outposts in Maungdaw and Rathedaung townships on October 9, 2016, military and police commenced a so-called "clearance operation" in selected areas of northern Rakhine State. Numerous observers and monitors, including signatories to this letter as well as the UN and news media, documented how state security forces targeted the civilian population and committed extrajudicial killings, torture including rapes and other sexual violence, systematic destruction of homes and looting of property, destruction of food, and obstructing humanitarian assistance, causing serious deprivation including among persons in the displaced civilian population. A report issued in early February 2017 by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights found that these human rights violations "seem to have been widespread as well as systematic, indicating the very likely commission of crimes against humanity."

The Fact-Finding Mission is in the interests of the government of Myanmar as well as the people of the country because it would demonstrate the government's willingness to uphold the rule of law, work collaboratively with the international community to help establish the facts, identify perpetrators, and deter future crimes by all parties to the conflict.

It is important to stress that the authorities in Myanmar commonly restrict access to certain parts of the country for monitors and others. High-level and sustained international engagement will be needed to ensure the authorities provide the Fact- Finding Mission with free and unfettered access to all the areas to which they are seeking access.

We believe the Fact-Finding Mission must be led by experts, including on international human rights and humanitarian law, who should receive free and unfettered access to ensure the process is thorough, equitable and capable of achieving its stated goals. The authorities must also ensure the safety of survivors and witnesses to speak freely without reprisals from state or non-state actors. The Fact-Finding Mission should also do its part to ensure the security of survivors, eyewitnesses, their families and others. The Fact-Finding Mission must be able to operate without government or military escort or interference that could limit access to witnesses and possibly endanger those who do come forward. The Fact-Finding Mission must be able to choose their own guides, fixers and interpreters to further ensure the independence, credibility and safety of their work. We also recommend the Fact-Finding Mission visit Bangladesh to interview victims and survivors who fled Rakhine State.

We are deeply concerned that if the government of Myanmar fails to fully cooperate with the Fact-Finding Mission, the situation in Rakhine State may further deteriorate. Failure to provide accountability may further fuel frustrations among the Rohingya population. Emboldened by the lack of consequences for abuses during its military operations in response to the October 9 attacks, the Myanmar military may continue to punish the civilian population and carry out further atrocities under the pretext of maintaining national security.

On the other hand, we believe the government of Myanmar's full cooperation with the Fact-Finding Mission would send a positive and important message to all stakeholders in Rakhine State and Myanmar, including to extremist-nationalists who have been reluctant to cooperate with such initiatives.

Similarly, a positive message can be sent, and the effects of the violence under investigation mitigated, by allowing unfettered and sustained humanitarian access to affected populations in Rakhine State and elsewhere in Myanmar. We encourage the government of Myanmar to allow this much needed access and for international actors to continue to urge it to do so.

Please urgently use your good offices to help ensure unfettered humanitarian access, the success of the Fact-Finding Mission and the full support and cooperation of the Myanmar authorities.

Sincerely,

Angkatan Belua Islam Malaysia (ABIM)
Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA)
ALTSEAN-Burma
Amnesty International
Burma Campaign UK (BCUK)
Burma Human Rights Network (BHRN)
Burmese Muslim Association (BMA)
Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW)
Civil Rights Defenders
FIDH – International Federation for Human Rights
Fortify Rights
Geutanyoe Foundation
Global Peace Mission Malaysia
Gusdurain Network Indonesia
Human Rights Now
Human Rights Watch (HRW)
International State Crime Initiative
Majlis Persundingan Pertubuhan Islam Malaysia (MAPIM) Malaysian Humanitarian Aid and Relief (MAHAR) Refugees International
Restless Beings
The Arakan Project
Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC) 

An Evolution of Rohingya Persecution in Myanmar: From Strategic Embrace to Genocide

Source mei, 20 April

Rohingya refugees rally - Kuala Lumpur - June 17, 2012

Are religious doctrinal differences primarily responsible for stoking intercommunal fear and hatred? What roles have state, sub-state, and transnational actors played in fomenting sectarian discord? And what could be done to avert sectarian violence, to foster tolerance and peaceful coexistence, and to promote reconciliation? The essays in this series tackle these and other salient questions pertaining to sectarianism in the MENA and Asia Pacific regions. Read more ...

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"Send us as many birth control pills as you can. They (Myanmar troops) are gang-raping our women. They are arresting and killing all our men. There is nothing else you can do. Just pray to Allah and to wish us speedy deaths! This is just simply unbearable," said a Rohingya woman talking from her mobile phone from Myanmar's predominantly Rohingya region of Northern Rakhine State bordering Bangladesh.[1] [See Figure below right.] She was talking to her brother, an unregistered refugee living and working in a poor and rough neighborhood called Salayang on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Among the handful of Burmese eager for updates, listening to the phone conversation on speaker phone was U Maung Maung, a respected Muslim leader and activist from Mandalay, also making a living in Malaysia. Maung immediately posted this on his Facebook timeline on November 20, 2016,[2] hoping to alert people to the shocking events unfolding. Western experts on the region note there is an "information blackhole,"[3] owing to the Myanmar government's lockdown of Northern Rakhine State for its 'security clearance operations.' As such, Myanmar authorities have barred access to humanitarian aid groups and local and international media. This latest lockdown was a result of the killing of nine Myanmar police officers which was believed to have been instigated by Rohingya hoping to form a resistance group.

However, Maung's attempt to alert the world via Facebook came to naught. The post was in Burmese language. But more importantly, his alert — like many others conveyed by 'locals' — had not been vetted by any Western organizations or international human rights 'experts,' who have become the standard bearers of facts or "truth-conveyors" relating to other peoples' experiences of atrocities. Victims and their accounts need first to be vetted by these mediating agencies — a system understood only too well by the Burmese government with its blanket denials of the allegations coming out of the information black hole it created. Aung San Suu Kyi Government's Information Committee referred to the atrocities on many occasions, "fake rape"[4] and "exaggerations" or "fabrications."[5]

Following hundreds of similar allegations and coordinated documentation by Rohingya groups of mass killings, mass rape, and destruction of whole villages, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCR) sent a team to interview Rohingya refugees who had recently fled to Bangladesh — 70,000[6] of whom had arrived in four months. Based on over 200 interviews, OHCR issued a damning Flash Report (Feb 3) complete with harrowing tales of burning elderly Rohingya men alive and slitting children's throats.[7] The U.N. estimates that Myanmar may have killed as many as 1,000 Rohingya men in recent violence alone.[8] This information, presented at the 34^th session of the Human Rights Council,[9] did not result in the much-hoped-and-lobbied-for U.N. Commission of Inquiry with a view towards the International Criminal Court. The result was a compromise — a 'Fact Finding Mission'[10] — which both the military[11] and the National League for Democracy (NLD)-led government[12] are determined not to accept or cooperate with. 

We have previously argued that far from being a new phenomenon, waves of state-directed violence and communal destruction such as these have been occurring since 1978 and are part of a process of 'slow-burning genocide.'[13] Two other independent studies published a year later reinforce our findings.[14] Over these decades, Rohingya experiences and sufferings have been tossed across multiple discourses that deny the central role of the military such as "communal violence"[15] or since the Oct. 9 raids, "Muslim insurgency" pregnant with potential for escalations involving "international terrorism."[16] In recent years, these have run concurrently with human rights bodies and organisations framing the situation as 'ethnic cleansing'[17] and 'crimes against humanity' — U.N. Special Rapporteurs and the OHCHR included.

Despite these shifting narratives, the fundamental nature of the problem has remained constant. The military-controlled state has attempted to 'cleanse' the nation of the largest Muslim minority in Myanmar, unique with legitimate claims to Northern Rakhine as their ancestral home. Firstly, this has been attempted through legal, bureaucratic, and administrative means — such as removing their rights to citizenship, destroying and revoking documents in Rohingya possession, refusing to register thousands of Rohingya infants, household checks, as well as subjecting them to a web of criss-crossing security grids by which the freedom of movement of the Rohingya population is severely restricted and monitored.[18]Secondly, it has been attempted through denial of their history/identity and propaganda campaigns that serve to de-nationalise them.[19] Where these two attempts have not been achieved, communities have also been subjected to physical destruction through methods such as burning property, evictions, and killings.

However, this has not always been the case. In 1961, the Burmese co-author's late great uncle, Zeya Kyaw Htin Major Ant Kywe, a decorated nationalist solider, was the Deputy Commander of the administrative district of Mayu in 1961, which was effectively established as a homeland for Rohingya in Rakhine State in order to maintain law and order[20] in the region where the central government was confronted with rebellions from two different fronts: Muslim Rohingya separatists and Buddhist Rakhine nationalists clamouring for statehood. 

Waves of state-directed violence and communal destruction ... have been occurring since 1978 and are part of a process of 'slow-burning genocide.'

On Myanmar's Independence Day (January 4, 1948), even as the Union Jack was lowered at the colonial Secretariat in Rangoon, the Burma Army was engaged in ferocious battles against armed Rakhine (Buddhist) rebels[21] who wanted to reclaim the sovereignty they had lost to the militarily dominant Burmese Buddhist group in 1784. 

In the years following Myanmar independence in 1948, the central government, specifically the Ministry of Defense, strategically sought to embrace Rohingyas as a bona fide ethnic minority of the new Union of Burma,[22] with equal and full citizenship rights, along with multiple other minorities with armed revolts against the ethnically Burmese central government. It is essential to see the root of the Rohingya persecution not simply in the sectarian ethnic conflict between the two main co-habitant communities in Rakhine state of Western Burma, namely Rakhine Buddhist majority and Rohingya Muslim minorities, but in the ethnic triangle involving also the majority Burmese in ultimate control of the state (both the military under General Ne Win and the civilian political coalition headed by PM U Nu).[23]

Although the Burma Army was fighting battles on two fronts in West Myanmar, it was the Rakhine rebellions that presented a more serious threat to the central government than the simultaneous Muslim/Rohingya armed movements, some of which sought, with no success, to join with the predominantly Muslim nation of Pakistan (East Pakistan). During the Rohingya surrender ceremony of 290 Muslim rebels, held on 4 July 1961 in Northern Rakhine town of Buthidaung, the Commander of the Border Area Administration and Territorial Forces Colonel Saw Myint promised "absolutely no religious or ethnic discrimination" against Rohingyas — vis-à-vis Rakhine Buddhists —and guaranteed "equal protection under Law for all those who abide by the law and live in peace."[24] Saw Myint's superior and the second in command, after General Ne Win of the Burma Army Brigadier Aung Gyi, presided over the ceremony and explained the need for Rohingyas as an ethnic minority group to recognize and accept the primacy of political allegiance to the Union of Burma over their kinship, cultural, and religious ties in exchange for the full citizenship rights and ethnic equality which they were offered.[25]  

In addition, as early as May 1960, the Ministry of Defense agreed to the Rohingyas' request to carve out the predominantly Rohingya geographic pocket in Northern Rakhine State and establish a new district named after the local river Mayu. The co-founder of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, the then-young Lt-Colonel Tin Oo, was tasked with establishing the Mayu District, which was to be administered centrally from the Burmese-controlled Rakhine Military Command.[26]  Rohingyas' request was precipitated by the moves made by Prime Minister U Nu's re-elected civilian government in order to fulfil its election pledge of granting Rakhine Buddhists a separate statehood, within the Union of Burma.[27]  

Within eight months of the establishment of the May-U District, General Ne Win and his deputies staged a coup against U Nu's government on the pretext that Nu's opportunistic electioneering and weak leadership were emboldening ethnic minorities' demands for devolution of power away from the Burmese centre. While the coup leaders continued to honour the arrangements with Rohingyas, the policy orientation of the military leadership shifted towards racist, isolationist, xenophobic, and socialistically doctrinaire. The more liberal and less radical military leaders such as the Deputy Commander in Chief of Army Brigadier General Aung Gyi and Colonel Chit Myaing were sacked in 1963 and 1964.[28] The remaining military leaders under Ne Win's commandership began to marginalize and eventually cleanse the Armed Forces of Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Hindu officers unless they agreed to convert to Buddhism. Having remade this once-multiethnic, multi-faith national institution of unrivalled power and control over society, the military leadership turned its sights to society at large.[29] Most important, the army leadership initiated, promoted, and sustained the process of radically reimagining ethnic and political histories, national identity, and the society at large along the army's new "purist" Buddhist vision.[30]

In 1978, Ne Win launched a centrally organized, violent operation against Rohingyas of both Southern and Northern Rakhine, under the pretext of surprise immigration checks. Known as Operation King Dragon, the events of 1978 are carved into the consciousness and the inter-generational memories of Rohingya communities. It was conducted as an interagency campaign of terror involving Immigration, Religious Affairs, Police, Courts, Army, Navy, and police intelligence, as well as local administrations made up of anti-Rohingya Rakhine.[32] Myanmar's former chief of military intelligence until 2004, Ex-General Khin Nyunt, who was operationally involved on the ground as a young major from Special Operations Bureau, Ministry of Defense, serving as the Commander of Infantry Regiment No. 20 based in Rakhine, wrote that a total of 277,938 fled, between February 12 and June 3, from Western Burma into the neighboring Bangladesh.[33] Shut off from the outside world by an isolationist military regime, the Burmese public — the Burmese co-author included — was misinformed of this operation as an act of national defense, under the slogan "the (Buddhist) race could be swallowed up by other (alien) race"[34] — an understanding that still resounds today. This was the first of the chronic waves of state-sponsored and state-condoned violence against Rohingyas which have resulted each time in hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fleeing "unbearable life on land."

Following Ne Win's coup in 1962, the nation's vision fundamentally changed ...

Following Ne Win's coup in 1962, the nation's vision fundamentally changed — from one that sought to establish peace through a unified multiethnic nation based on equality, to one which harnessed and mobilized the Buddhist public's anti-colonial sentiments, and along with this their anti-Indian (subcontinent) and anti-Muslim racisms, which emerged out of the colonial-era political economy in which locals were subordinated to Indians.[31] It was a vision which sought to 'cleanse' the nation through systematic attempts to subjugate some ethnic minorities whilst removing others (such as Rohingyas) from the national fold.

The now internationally infamous 1982 Citizenship Act was one part of a long process of stripping the Rohingya of their citizenship and the rights of future generations of Rohingya to obtain Myanmar citizenship. It was accompanied by eviction, land confiscation, and disenfranchisement of the Rohingya. Although this controversial law does not mention Rohingyas by name, viewed within the historical context of large scale forced repatriations from Bangladesh, and based on accounts of those involved in drafting the Act, it can be concluded that the primary aim in drafting the Act was to exclude Rohingyas from citizenship.[35] The law — and its application regarding 135 fixed ethnic nationalities excluding Rohingya, on the basis of their absence in the dubious colonial censuses, who in fact existed in Myanmar prior to the first British Annexation of Western Burma in 1826 — has not simply left Rohingya vulnerable to multiple discriminatory policies aimed at non-nationals, it has also fed popular anti-colonial racisms in society that have led to pervasive social ostracism of Rohingya and violence in which Rakhine Buddhists and state security forces have worked hand in glove.  

Decades of facts relating to the instrumental role of the central Myanmar State in the abuses of Rohingya are buried alongside very real human corpses.

Despite annual U.N. human rights monitoring in Myanmar since 1992[36] and the UNHCR having a presence on the ground in northern Rakhine State since the early 1990s, violent persecution of the Rohingya has continued unabated and indeed increased. This persecution was largely perceived as a part of the authoritarian regime's general pattern of rights violations, for the Myanmar military was notoriously repressive towards ethnically Burmese opposition movement under Aung San Suu Kyi's leadership across the country, as well as other non-Bama ethnic groups in the country's North and North East regions.

Myanmar's rights abuses in Rohingya regions of Western Myanmar weren't seen as something that demanded special attention. Today, while the anti-historical and institutionally amnesiac discourses such as 'humanitarian concern,' 'communal conflict,' 'security and terrorism,' 'lack of development,' and 'livelihood creation' float through the ether world of foreign embassies, development, and U.N. agencies, the decades of facts relating to the instrumental role of the central Myanmar State in the abuses of Rohingya are buried alongside very real human corpses — again — waiting to be verified and validated by the right kind of foreign experts and the right kind of U.N. process. People and processes that never come. As Rohingyas in Northern Rakhine wait and their diasporic relatives post desperate calls for U.N. peacekeepers and intervention on Facebook, 'Never again!' — the foundational myth of the United Nations — must sound bitterly hollow.

Fifty-five years ago, the Myanmar Ministry of Defense and its military leaders officially embraced Rohingya as an ethnic minority, granted them equal rights, and full citizenship while enabling them to make contributions to the country's politics, society, and economy. Today, the military's radical reversal of Rohingya policy created the space in society where Rohingyas are commonly seen as "leaches," their identity and history "a hoax," and their presence a demographic and jihadist threat to the Buddhist nation. Meanwhile, over the same period, under the same national visions, other ethnic communities along the country's strategic, resource-rich borderlands including Kachins, Shan, Karenni, etc., were offered promises, pledges, and agreements by generations of military and civilian leaders, only to have them reneged when powerful stakeholders changed their strategic calculations. Under the military regime, those that refused to be co-opted into the military's national vision complete with its Burmese dominance, were and still are subject to persecution, oppression, and war. They are victims of the same ideologies that cleanse the nation of Rohingyas and all those that oppose or live in contradiction to the state's centralized control and organization of Burma's ethnic minorities.

With NLD elected to government and with Aung San Suu Kyi as de facto leader, one would hope for at least a dilution of the military leadership's post-1962 purist ideologies, or at best for a radical re-imagination of the Burmese national community incorporating her late father's (Aung San) vision of post-colonial Burma as a secular, progressive, multi-culturalist, multiethnic nation. Tragically, it is not only the armed forces that have implemented internal cleansing of their institutions. NLD is now also without a single Muslim representative from the population. Every time the government calls rape 'fake' on the military's behalf or refuses to cooperate with U.N. bodies' attempts to unearth and validate atrocities, Aung San's multiethnic vision of Burma is trampled further into the ground.

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[1] Amartya Sen, the foremost scholar on famines, explains why Burma's intentional measures to deny, severely limit, or block Rohingyas' access to livelihoods, nutritional opportunities, and essential medical services is an act of "institutionalized killing," a slow genocide, not like Khmer Rouge's genocide, Rwanda or the Holocaust. Conference on the Plight of the Rohingya, Harvard University, November 4, 2014, accessed April 5, 2017, http://tribunalonmyanmar.org/2014/11/15/the-slow-genocide-of-the-rohingya-by-nobel-laureate-amartya-sen/. 

[2] Ibid.

[3] International State Crime Initiative (ISCI), Queen Mary University of London, "Genocide of Rohingya in Myanmar may be entering a new and deadly phase, October 17, 2016, April 3, 2017,  http://www.qmul.ac.uk/media/news/items/hss/187983.html.

[4] Myanmar State Counsellor Information Committee, "Information Committee Refutes Rumours of Rape," December 26, 2016, accessed April 3, 2017,  http://www.statecounsellor.gov.mm/en/node/551. See also "Aung San Suu Kyi is making war time rape easier to commit," MSN.com, December 26, 2016, accessed April 3, 2017, http://www.msn.com/en-sg/news/other/aung-san-suu-kyi-is-making-wartime-rape-easier-to-commit/ar-BBxzZR6.

[5] "Aung San Suu Kyi laughs out loud at Rohingya genocide allegations while in Singapore," The Independent, January 5, 2017, April 3, 2017,http://www.theindependent.sg/aung-san-suu-kyi-laughs-out-loud-at-rohingya-genocide-allegations-while-in-singapore/; and Jonah Fisher, "Myanmar's Rohingya:  Truth, lies and Aung San Suu Kyi," BBC, accessed April 3, 2017, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-38756601 Accessed 3 April 2017.

[6] "Rohingya flee into Bangladesh as Crisis Deepen," Getty Images, January 18, 2017, accessed April 3, 2017, http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/album/rohingya-flee-into-bangladesh-as-crisis-deepens-around-70000-rohingya-muslims--fVZ0izTy4ESIzTtE_KtsOQ#people-are-seen-in-kutapalong-unregistered-camp-on-january-18-2017-in-picture-id631975540.

[7] "Devastating cruelty against Rohingya children, women and men detailed in UN human rights report," Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), February 3, 2017, accessed April 3, 2017, http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=21142&L... http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=21142&LangID=E#sthash.ktblvICd.dpuf Accessed 3 April 2017. See the full report at http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/MM/FlashReport3Feb2017.pdf Accessed 3 April 2017.  

[8] "Exclusive: More than 1,000 feared killed in Myanmar army crackdown on Rohingya - U.N. officials," Reuters, February 8, 2017, accessed April 3, 2017, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-rohingya-idUSKBN15N1TJ.

[9] U.N. OHCR, "Statement by Ms. Yanghee LEE, Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Myanmar at the 34th session of the Human Rights Council," March 2017, accessed April 3, 2017, http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=21355&LangID=E#sthash.au9jPlEw.dpuf.

[10] "Rohingya issue: UN to send fact-finding mission to Myanmar," ANI News, March 24, 2017, accessed April 3, 2017, http://www.aninews.in/newsdetail-MzY/MzA1NzIz/rohingya-issue-un-to-send-fact-finding-mission-to-myanmar.html Accessed 3 April 2017.

[11] "Myanmar Military Chief Defends Crackdown Against Rohingya in Rakhine State," Radio Free Asia, March 27, 2017, accessed April 3, 2017, http://www.rfa.org/english/news/myanmar/myanmar-military-chief-defends-crackdown-against-rohingya-in-rakhine-state-03272017154143.html.

[12] "Myanmar rejects UN call for rights probe," Bangkok Post, March 25, 2017, accessed April 3, 2017, http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/general/1221134/myanmar-rebuffs-un-rights-probe. 

[13]Maung Zarni and Alice Cowley, "The Slow-Burning Genocide of Myanmar's Rohingya," Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal 23, 3 (2014): 683-754, accessed April 3, 2017, http://digital.law.washington.edu/dspace-law/handle/1773.1/1377. (Hereafter "The Slow-Burning Genocide"). 

[14] See Penny Green, Thomas MacManus & Alicia de la Cour Venning, "Countdown to Annihilation: Genocide in Myanmar," International State Crime Initiative Report, Queen Mary University of London, 2015, accessed April 3, 2017,  http://statecrime.org/state-crime-research/isci-report-countdown-to-annihilation-genocide-in-myanmar/; and "Is Genocide Occuring in Myanmar's Rakhine State?: A Legal Analysis," Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic, Yale Law School, October 2015, accessed April 3, 2017, http://www.fortifyrights.org/downloads/Yale_Persecution_of_the_Rohingya_October_2015.pdf.

[15] See, for instance, Jim Della-Giacoma, "A Dangerous Resurgence of Communal Violence in Myanmar," International Crisis Group, March 28. 2013, accessed April 3, 2017, https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/south-east-asia/myanmar/dangerous-resurgence-communal-violence-myanmar. See also "Why is there communal violence in Myanmar?" BBC, July 3, 2014, accessed April 3, 2017, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18395788.

[16] "Myanmar: A New Muslim Insurgency in Rakhine State," International Crisis Group Report No. 283/Asia, December 15, 2016, accessed April 3, 2017, https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/south-east-asia/myanmar/283-myanmar-new-muslim-insurgency-rakhine-state; Tim Johnston and Anagha Neelakantan, "The World's Newest Muslim Insurgency Is Being Waged in Burma," TIME, December 13, 2016, accessed April 3, 2017,http://time.com/4601203/burma-myanmar-muslim-insurgency-rohingya/.

[17] Human Rights Watch, "Burma: End Ethnic Cleansing of Rohingya Muslims," April 22, 2013, accessed April 3, 2017,https://www.hrw.org/news/2013/04/22/burma-end-ethnic-cleansing-rohingya-muslims. See also Jocelyne Sambira, "Myanmar minorities suffer 'systemic' discrimination, abuse: UN," United Nations Radio, June 20, 2016, accessed April 3, 2017, http://www.unmultimedia.org/radio/english/2016/06/myanmar-minorities-suffer-systemic-discrimination-abuse-un/#.WOKL1_nyu5s.

[18] See "The Slow-Burning Genocide." See also Widney Brown, "Where there is police There is persecution, Physicians for Human Rights," Physicians for Human Rights, October 2016, accessed April 3, 2017, http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/library/reports/myanmar-rakhine-state.html?referrer=https://uk.search.yahoo.com/.

[19] In addition to the state-controlled mass media and official speeches by the generals and ex-generals, Myanmar Military Intelligence Services spread deliberately false historical information through teachers' refresher courses at the Civil Servant Training School at Hpaung Gyi, which thousands of Burmese state school teachers are required to attend, according to Daw Khin Hla, former Rohingya Middle School Teacher, from Myanmar, who spoke at the conference on Rohingya Persecution, November 4, 2014, accessed April 3, 2017,  http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic662843.files/HGEI-Burma_Semin...

[20] "Finally, peace has prevailed in Mayu Borderlands District," Editorial, Special Issue on Mayu, Current Affairs (or Khit Yay), Ministry of Defense, the Union of Burma, 12, 6 (July 18, 1961): 5. (Burmese Language publication).

[21] Tape-recorded Interview in Virginia, U.S. (July 1994) with retired Colonel Chit Myaing, former member of General Ne Win's Revolutionary Council (1962). As the Deputy Commander of the Burma Rifle Brigade 5, Chit Myaing led the government's military campaign against the armed Rakhine rebellion in January 1948.

[22] The full text of the official Burmese language transcript of the speech delivered by Brigadier General Aung Gyi, Vice Chief of Staff (Army), at the Surrender Ceremony of Mujahideen Rohingya troops, Maung Daw Town, Northern Rakhine State, 4 July 1961. See "Special Issue on Mayu", Current Affairs (or Khit Yay), Ministry of Defense, the Union of Burma, 12, 6 (July 18, 1961): 8-10 & 23-24. (Hereafter Brigadier General Aung Gyi's speech).

[23] For the detailed records of this triangular politics amongst Rakhine-Burmese-Rohingya see the book-length Burmese language publication, Kyaw Win, Mya Han and Thein Hlaing, "Myanmar Naing Ngan Yay" (Burma's Politics), Volume 3 (years 1958-1962), (Rangoon: Universities Press, 1991), in particular Chapter 12, pp. 167-250. (Hereafter "Burma's Politics," 1991).

[24] The full text of the official Burmese language transcript of the speech by Colonel Saw Myint, Chief of the Border Areas Administration and Commander of the Territorial Forces, "Special Issue on Mayu," Current Affairs (or Khit Yay), Ministry of Defense, the Union of Burma, 12, 6 (July 18, 1961): 15.

[25] Brigadier General Aung Gyi's Speech, 1961.

[26] Transcript of the Current Affairs magazine discussions with Prime Minister's Private Secretary-2 U Khin Nyunt, "Special Issue on Mayu," Current Affairs (or Khit Yay), Ministry of Defense, the Union of Burma, 12, 6 (July 18, 1961): 16-20.

[27] "Burma's Politics" (1991), 230.

[28] Interview with retired Colonel Chit Myaing, 1994, op cit.

[29] Within Myanmar Armed Forces – and in the society at large –  it is widely known that non-Buddhist military officers no longer get promoted beyond the ranks of Major.  

[30] Wa Lone, "Snr Gen Min Aung Hlaing pledges to help safeguard Buddhism," Myanmar Times, June 24, 2016, accessed April 3, 2017,http://www.mmtimes.com/index.php/national-news/21035-snr-gen-min-aung-hlaing-pledges-to-help-safeguard-buddhism.html.

[31] Maung Zarni, "Buddhist Nationalism in Burma

Institutionalized racism against the Rohingya Muslims led Burma to genocide", Feature, Tricycle, Spring 2013, https://tricycle.org/magazine/buddhist-nationalism-burma/ Accessed 3 April 2017.

[32] Personal Testimony delivered by U Ba Sein, a former Rohingya civil servant – now a refugee in London, UK - who lived through this King Dragon Operation in N. Rakhine, Permanent People's Tribunal on Myanmar, Queen Mary University of London. March 6-7, 2017, accessed April 3, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9Q11ZhC8qI (Ba Sein's testimony begins at 7:55 minutes).

[33] Ex-General Khin Nyunt, Naing Ngan Ei Ah Nauk Hpet Ta Gar Pauk Ka Pya Tha Na (or The Crisis from the Western Gate of Burma), (Rangoon: Pan Myo Ta Yar Press, 2016), particularly Chapter 3, pp. 21-43.

[34] Although race/ethnicity and faith are two different "things," the majority Buddhist Burmese public collapse the two.  The Burmese popular saying sums it up: "to be Burmese is to be Buddhist."

[35] The Burmese co-author and a key drafter, the late Rakhine historian Dr Aye Kyaw, were friends and fellow exiles for years in the United States.  A few years before the two bouts of violence against Rohingyas in 2012 Aye Kyaw gave a Burmese language interview to the influential Irrawaddy News Group wherein he explained in details the internal discussions among the Drafting Committee members, that focused on the best ways to de-nationalize Rohingya through the citizenship act.  Irrawaddy has since removed Aye Kyaw's Burmese language interview.  

[36] See the mountains of Human Rights Situation Reports on Myanmar for the last 25 years beginning March 3, 1992, United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, accessed April 3, 2017, http://ap.ohchr.org/documents/dpage_e.aspx?m=89. 

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Source TOC, 19 April

Photo - Fauzi Azman, Project Hearts to Hands

Volunteers and MP Louis Ng launched public exhibition revealing the story of Rohingya refugees' rescued by Acehnese

By onlinecitizen on April 19, 2017 Civil Society

A public exhibition organised by Singapore's first volunteer advocacy group for refugees showcased the little-known story of Rohingya refugees rescued by Acehnese fishermen. It was

Photo - Fauzi Azman, Project Hearts to Hands

launched by Member of Parliament Louis Ng and lasted till 14^th April at the National Library Plaza. The N(ONE exhibition documents photos and stories of the Rohingya refugees after they were rescued by Acehnese fishermen and includes a documentary screening fringe event.

In May 2015, the Southeast Asian region bore witness to the largest humanitarian boat crisis since the Vietnam War, where thousands of Rohingya and Bengali migrants were adrift at the Andaman Sea after being abandoned by smugglers.

Photo - Fauzi Azman, Project Hearts to Hands

While countries in the region failed to respond, a fishing community in Aceh, Indonesia, rescued these migrants. An Indonesian non-profit group, Yayasan Geutanyoe, then extended aid to both refugees and the Acehnese fishing community, and helped to arrange safe passage for the refugees.

Last year, under Project Hearts to Hands, a group of 30 volunteers from Singapore visited the refugees and fishing community in Aceh.

Photo - Fauzi Azman, Project Hearts to Hands

MP Louis Ng, who was part of the team, shared that "I've visited the refugee camps in Aceh twice now and each trip really made me question my faith in humanity. What I saw, the stories I heard and the experience they shared with me really broke my heart."

The N(ONE exhibition is organised entirely by volunteers from Project Hearts to Hands and local non-profit group Advocates for Refugees. Mathilda Ho, Founder of Advocates for Refugees said, "besides showcasing the Rohingya refugees

Photo - Fauzi Azman, Project Hearts to Hands

who were rescued, the fishermen of Pusong, the rescuers are exemplary of the spirit of humanitarianism, in that they would rescue anyone, even an animal or their enemy. It is an important value that you help others unconditionally."

This was their first public exhibition, which also includes a film screening of a documentary produced by students from NTU. For details of the exhibition and fringe events, visit the Facebook Page of Project Hearts to Hands.

About Advocates for Refugees

Advocates for Refugees - Singapore (AFR-SG) is Singapore's first ground-up initiative working for the cause of refugees and forced migration in our region and beyond. They aim to open up community dialogue on refugee and asylum seeker issues, with a strong focus on the impacts of forced migration on Singapore's closest neighbours (receiving countries) Malaysia, Indonesia, South-East Asia and Asia region as a whole.

AFR-SG encourages ordinary and extraordinary Singaporeans, and people living in Singapore - regardless of political affiliation, religion, race and ethnicity - to participate in dialogues, explore possible roles as individuals, as an interest group/community, and as a nation state can play to offer community-driven solutions and to help ameliorate the causes and consequences of forced migration. As advocates, they believe in the importance of raising awareness, facilitating conversations, and addressing misinformed perceptions (e.g. conflating all refugees, asylum seekers, stateless persons as "economic migrants" or labelling them as "illegal migrants").

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VOA interview with Dr. Zarni on Suu Kyi's denial of ethnic cleansing in Myanmar

pl click here to listen- VOA interview with Dr. Zarni on Suu Kyi's denial of ethnic cleansing in Myanmar

BBC Myanmar correspondent fact-checks the heck out of Aung San Suu Kyi

Source coconuts, 6 April

Photo: Twitter / Jonah Fisher

State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi's responses to BBC special correspondent Fergal Keane in an interview released today have been described by Myanmar watchers as "regrettable" and "deeply disingenuous". But for the Lady's millions of admirers, it may be difficult to see how.

Video Myanmar: Aung San Suu Kyi exclusive interview - BBC News

Here's our recommendation: watch the interview again, and if you still feel satisfied with Aung San Suu Kyi's performance, help yourself to a healthy dose of skepticism from BBC's Myanmar-based reporter Jonah Fisher, who has painstakingly and super-helpfully fact-checked her statements. Check out his comments below.

   

Thank you, Jonah.

India to identify, arrest and deport nearly 40,000 Rohingya Muslims

Source inuth, 5 April

Indian Foreigners Act, provides for detection, arrest, prosecution and deportation of "illegal immigrants.

The Central Government is planning to identify, arrest and deport the Rohingya Muslims who have entered in India through Mayanmar and are staying illegally in various regions. They are likely to be arrested and deported under the Foreigners Act. Indian Foreigners Act, provides for detection, arrest, prosecution and deportation of "illegal immigrants".

In a meeting chaired by Union Home Secretary, Rajiv Mehrishi held on Monday, discussed how to identify, arrest and deport the Rohangya Muslims settled illegally in India.

The meeting was attended by Jammu & Kashmir Chief Secretary and DGP, joint secretary (J&K) in MHA and senior BSF and intelligence officers.Around 5,500-5,700 of the

There are an estimated 40,000 Rohingya Muslims who, after being disowned by Buddhist Myanmar, had left their homes and crossed border to take refuge in India. Around 5,500-5,700 of the Rohingya immigrants are based in Jammu alone.

According to a Senior Home Ministry official, Rohangya muslims follow three infiltration routes for entering India, which is by sea, via Bangladesh border and via Chin area on Myanmar border.

However, the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) has recognised around 14,000 Rohingya Muslims living in India as 'refugees'. But the Indian government did not accept this status and considered them as foreigners who entered the country illegally.

The implementation of this decision is not that easy as Myanmar does not accept them as its citizen and instead, calls them "Bengali interlopers".

Man Killed in Buthidaung After Talking to Journalists

Source Irawaddy, 2 April

NAYPYIDAW — A Rohingya Muslim village official in Arakan State's Buthidaung Township was killed by a group of men two days after he was interviewed by journalists on a press trip organized by the Ministry of Information (MOI), according to the local police force.

Hamid Dullah, a 46-year-old assistant administrator of Tinn May village in Buthidaung Township was sleeping at home on Friday night when men entered the house and killed him by slitting his throat.

Hamid Dullah had spoken to the media about military training organized by an armed group in Tinn May village when journalists visited the location on the MOI-sponsored trip on Wednesday.

A total of 18 local and international journalists visited Maungdaw and Buthidaung townships this week on a three-day trip organized by the government's information team.

Hamid Dullah also informed visiting journalists during the Wednesday interview that he had received death threats online for collaborating with authorities regarding the arrest of 17 locals alleged to have undergone the military training.

Maungdaw district administrator U Ye Htut told the Irrawaddy that those who cooperated with authorities and those who talked to media, diplomats and others were being targeted by what appeared to be an organized network.

In late December last year, a Muslim man named U Shuna Myar was brutally beheaded after he spoke with 13 reporters on a government-sponsored trip to Ngakhura village, Maungdaw Township.

Asked whether security provisions had subsequently been planned or undertaken for interviewees and others on government-sponsored trips in light of the potential for reprisal activities, U Ye Htut maintained that it was "not possible" to provide security for individual interviewees. Police had opened a case into the death of Hamid Dullah, he said.

However, U Ye Htut said that police were providing security to three Rohingya Muslim women in the village of Kya Kaung Taung in Maungdaw Township who told journalists on Thursday that they were raped by Burma Army soldiers during security operations in northern Arakan State in January and later filed cases.

It remained unclear whether the government and others would be reviewing their policies on the organization and conduct of escorted trips by media, diplomats and others after the latest murder.

Meanwhile, U Myint Kyaw of the Myanmar Journalists Network (MJN) urged the government and media organizations to avoid publishing the photos and personal information of interviewees and detainees in the troubled region.

"It is dangerous. Detainees may come to harm when they are released," he said in relation to the practice by state media of publishing images and details of those arrested in the area.

The government and media needed to be careful to avoid potential harm to news sources, U Myint Kyaw added.

In a separate incident not known to be connected to the recent media visit, police on Saturday said that earlier that day a group of men abducted a village administrator in the village of Thet Kaing Nya and killed two others.

Maungdaw border police's Brig-Gen Thura San Lwin had previously told media that Rohingya Muslims who accepted National Verification Certificates (NVC) or were granted full citizenship cards for Burma were sometimes threatened by an unknown armed group.

The current NVC process omits holders' ethnicity and religion, which has led to a rejection of the document by many Rohingya Muslim villagers, who demand this basic recognition.

"Some Muslims receive the NVC secretly and then hide out, away from their village, as they are threatened," Brig-Gen Thura San Lwin said.

According to immigration officer U Than Shwe, 746,000 Muslims live in Buthidaung, Maungdaw, and Taung Pyo Letwai. About 70,000 ethnic Arakanese live in the area.

Only 4,600 people have accepted the NVC since the project was launched in 2014, according to the official.

Earlier this week a group calling itself the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, previously named the Faith Movement, or Harakah al-Yaqin, said in a statement that it was carrying out armed resistance in northern Arakan state as 'self-defense'. The group denied links with any international terrorist group.

Under its previous name, the group took credit for a series of armed attacks on 3 border outposts in northern Arakan State on Oct 9. 2016, according to a report released in December by the International Crisis Group.

The report also said that the group had "apparently killed several informers."

Topics: Arakan State, Maungdaw, Rohingya