Discrimination against the Rohingya

See also Main Library > Refugees > Burmese Refugees in Bangladesh and Main Library >Administration and administrative areas > Arakan (Rakhine) State - http://www.burmalibrary.org/show.php?cat=1241&lo=d&sl=0 - which carries OBL's main documentation on the current crisis of the Rohingya, with links to UN, governmental, NGO and other sources.
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Title: Thailand Offers Persecuted Rohingya Little Hope
Summary: "Thai Prime Minister Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha’s racist slurs directed at the Rohingya are bad enough. But they are made even worse because they reflect the Thai government’s cruel policy toward...
Sub-title: Prime Minister’s Racist Comments Reflect Inhumane Asylum Seeker Policy
Description: "Thai Prime Minister Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha’s racist slurs directed at the Rohingya are bad enough. But they are made even worse because they reflect the Thai government’s cruel policy toward Rohingya asylum seekers who take perilous journeys to escape persecution and serious abuses in Myanmar’s Rakhine State. While presenting his new government’s policy statement to parliament on July 25, Prayuth said: “Speaking of the Rohingya, I am sympathetic. But their looks, their appearance is very different from us. If you can accept to have more of these people in Thailand, that is up to you.” Thai authorities have for years said they do not want to accept Rohingya asylum seekers, and the Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC), chaired by Prayuth, stops them with a three-step action plan. Under the action plan, the Thai navy can intercept Rohingya boats nearing the coast, and provide fuel, food, water, and other supplies if the boat’s occupants agree to travel onward to Malaysia or Indonesia. Any boat that lands on Thai shores is seized. Thailand treats all Rohingya as illegal immigrants, subject to indefinite detention in squalid immigration and police lockups, and refuses to let the United Nations refugee agency conduct refugee status determinations for them. But under customary international law, Thailand cannot summarily reject asylum claims at the border. It is obligated to allow Rohingya asylum seekers to enter the country and seek protection. Thailand’s inhumane “push-back” policy for new boat arrivals should be scrapped immediately. As chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Thailand should lead efforts to set up a regional preparedness and protection mechanism for Rohingya asylum seekers in collaboration with sympathetic countries and relevant United Nations agencies. In particular, Thailand should grant the United Nations refugee agency unhindered access to conduct refugee status determination interviews for all Rohingya arriving in Thailand..."
Source/publisher: Human Rights Watch
Date of entry/update: 2019-08-01
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Title: Rohingya Refugee Emergency: Operational Dashboard: 2019 Indicators Monitoring (30 May 2019)
Description: "Over 741,000 Rohingya refugees have fled violence from Myanmar’s Rakhine state since August 2017 and are hosted in Bangladesh. Most of the refugees rely on humanitarian assistance, having left with few possessions and exhausted their financial resources during the journey. More than 910,000 Rohingya refugee women, men, girls and boys are hosted in Cox’s Bazar District, including 34,172 registered refugees who arrived in the 1990s (4%); and other unregistered Rohingya refugees who had settled in host communities prior to August 2017. Children make up 55% of the total refugee population and women and girls make up 52%. One in three refugee families have at least one easily identifiable protection vulnerability. Whilst the pace of arrivals has decreased, refugees continue to arrive in Bangladesh, as of end of May 2019. The dashboard monitor the monthly achievements of selected indicators from the 2019 country operation plan for each strategic area of activity with cumulative key figures and monthly highlights..."
Source/publisher: reliefweb via UN High Commissioner for Refugees
Date of entry/update: 2019-07-31
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Title: PM's advisor: Prolonged Rohingya crisis to pose hybrid security threat
Description: "Prime minister's security affairs advisor urged the international organizations to focus on the Rakhine State instead of just Bangladesh Prime Minister's Security Affairs Advisor Maj Gen (retd) Tarique Ahmed Siddique has said a hybrid security threat might have an impact outside Bangladesh if the Rohingya crisis remains unresolved. He said this while addressing the Second Meeting of Track 1.5 Bimstec Security Dialogue Forum as the chief guest at the Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies (BIISS) auditorium on Tuesday. "You never know who is going to take advantage of it," he said, seeking efforts from all to help resolve the problem. The prime minister’s security advisor urged the international organizations working on the Rohingya issue to work more on the other part of the border-- Rakhine State -- instead of only focusing inside Bangladesh to help boost confidence among Rohingyas to return to their place of origin. "It's a vicious circle we are getting into. If it becomes hot, it will be very difficult to cool down," he said, adding that he is seeing danger in future. Rohingya crisis, and repatriation process Bangladesh is now hosting over 1.1 million Rohingyas and most of them entered Bangladesh since August 25, 2017, after a crackdown by the Myanmar military on the ethnic minority Bangladesh and Myanmar signed the repatriation deal on November 23, 2017..."
Source/publisher: Dhaka Tribune
Date of entry/update: 2019-07-30
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Title: What is Myanmar offering Rohingya to return home?
Description: "Government delegation tries to convince Rohingya refugees to go back to Myanmar. It’s almost two years since more than 700,000 Rohingya fled a military crackdown in Myanmar. The UN labelled it 'a textbook example of ethnic cleansing' with soldiers accused of rape and murder and burning down Rohingya villages. Since their escape the mainly Muslim ethnic group has been crammed into the world’s largest refugee camp in Bangladesh. But Myanmar’s government is under pressure to take them back. And a delegation has been at Cox’s Bazar trying to persuade the Rohingya they should return to Rakhine State. But so far the refugees have said no. They want guarantees about their safety and for them to be granted citizenship. So what exactly is the Myanmar government offering?..."
Source/publisher: Al Jazeera English (Inside Story)
Date of entry/update: 2019-07-30
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Title: Aung San Suu Kyi and Viktor Orban discuss ‘Muslim population challenge’
Sub-title: The Burmese politician and Nobel Peace Prize winner has been slammed for her silence amid Myanmar’s genocide of Rohingya Muslims, while Orban is a fierce critic of Islam and Muslim migration to Europe.
Description: "Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi has become a pariah in recent years over her lack of action and silence over Myanmar’s persecution of its mainly Muslim Rohingya minority. But there appears to be at least one Western leader willing to court her support — Hungary’s populist Prime Minister Viktor Orban. The pair have seemingly found common ground, sharing concerns over migration and the ‘growing Muslim population’. A Hungarian government statement issued on Wednesday included pictures of the two greeting each other with gleaming smiles during a meeting in Budapest. The issue of illegal immigration was at the top of the agenda, according to the official release. “At the meeting the two leaders highlighted that one of the greatest challenges at present for both countries and their respective regions – South East Asia and Europe – is migration,” the statement said. “They noted that both regions have seen the emergence of the issue of coexistence with continuously growing Muslim populations.” Hungary was a key transit route for refugees and migrants trying to reach northern Europe during the refugee crisis, although few decided to stay there. Myanmar is home to native Muslim minorities, such as the Rohingya, who have roots in the country dating back centuries and does not experience significant inward migration..."
Source/publisher: TRT World
Date of entry/update: 2019-07-29
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Title: Cynical nationalism in Myanmar and India prolongs Rohingya suffering
Sub-title: India and Myanmar have managed to put aside their differences to tackle a common enemy.
Description: "In his briefing to the security council, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said last year that the situation in Myanmar was “one of the world’s worst humanitarian and human rights crises.” But there is one question that has gone unanswered in the entire discussion over the Rohingya issue so far: how have India and Myanmar forgotten their hostilities to rally behind the massacre of the Rohingya people? Human rights groups have termed the Rohingya issue a “textbook case of ethnic cleansing.” A brief background of the geopolitics in the region will allow us to understand better how this bizarre alliance has unleashed such a terrible catastrophe. Since the Cold War era, when Myanmar and its junta faced international sanctions, China’s big-brotherly patronage transformed Myanmar into a virtual client-state of China. China was the economic and military bloodline, which made it possible for Myanmarese to breathe in an otherwise suffocating international environment. The days of the Cold War have gone, however, and China’s influence in the country has only increased since. Thanks to China’s ever-increasing penchant for growth and influence, China has several massive ongoing economic and infrastructure projects in Myanmar, and Myanmar's military equipment is predominantly supplied by the Chinese Given this love affair, it is only natural that India, China’s biggest rival in the region that refused to join the Chinese-led project, the Belt and Road Initiative or the New Silk Road project, be very concerned. India also shares a long border with Myanmar. The Indian side of the shared border with hosts the insurgency-ridden and heavily militarised northeastern states of India, which have added volatility to bilateral relations. The same logic that has kept India suspicious of Chinese influence on its borders should dictate that India would oppose Myanmar permitting the Chinese to build a seaport in the western coastal state of Arakan (official name was changed to Rakhine). However, India has not raised its voice on this issue. Why? Well, the Answer lies in a shared enemy. India's populist Hindutva nationalism under the current BJP regime, which is centred around Bengali Muslims (e.g. the case of Assam), has overlapped with Theravada Buddhist-nationalism in Myanmar, which also identifies Bengali Muslims (in this case Rohingya) as its enemy..."
Source/publisher: TRT World
Date of entry/update: 2019-07-29
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Title: Malaysia calls for 'justice' for Rohingya Muslims in ASEAN summit
Sub-title: Malaysia FM Saifuddin Bin Abdullah says perpetrators of violence against Myanmar's minority must "be brought to justice," in talks with members of Association of Southeast Asian Nations gathered in Thailand conference.
Description: "Malaysia on Saturday said the perpetrators of violence against Myanmar's Rohingya minority must "be brought to justice," in sharp comments delivered at a normally tame regional summit of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). In talks on Saturday with Southeast Asian counterparts, Malaysia's Foreign Minister Saifuddin Bin Abdullah called for the "perpetrators of the Rohingya issue to be brought to justice," his ministry said in Tweet. He also said repatriation of the minority from the fetid, overcrowded refugee camps of Bangladesh "must include the citizenship of the Rohingya." Myanmar does not recognise the Rohingya as citizens, instead officially labelling them "Bengalis," short-hand for illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh. A military crackdown in 2017 drove more than 740,000 Rohingya Muslims into Bangladesh, carrying accounts of rape, mass killings and the razing of villages. UN investigators have called for Myanmar's top generals to be tried for genocide. But Myanmar's army and de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi have defended the action as necessary to flush out Rohingya rebels from Rakhine state..."
Source/publisher: TRT World
Date of entry/update: 2019-07-29
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Title: Myanmar Delegation meet in Bangladesh Refugee Camp Reported By Mr.Sayed Ullah in Detail.
Description: "The Rohingya are a people who pride their existence for centuries in #Myanmar and achievements amidst the nations of the world. Mission To revive the culture and spirit of the Rohingyas throughout the world via the new media channels and social networking Goals • To create a vivid Rohingya media through developing various media programs to focus the news throughout the world • To bring awareness of the Rohingya crisis to the world through the media networking programs • To promote the spirit of cooperation and coordination with the people around the world • To stop Rohingya from deviating to extremism • To promote peace and to pride on Rohingya's Islamic identity • To promote Rohingya genius and outstanding people as one of the ethnic minority group of Myanmar which has been denied by Myanmar government despite its existence in Myanmar for centuries • To promote Rohingya culture, history and civilization among the Rohingya youths to prove the world as one of the civilized minority group of Myanmar • To document Rohingya history and events to the people across the world We Are Trying To Update Rohingya News To The International Community With The Little Hope Of Life Since Myanmar Government Denying Us To Accord Citizen. Broadcasting & Media Production, Rohingya, Myanmar..."
Source/publisher: Arakan Times
Date of entry/update: 2019-07-29
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Title: Myanmar frees soldiers jailed for Rohingya massacre
Sub-title: The soldiers were sentenced in 2018 for 10 years over killing a group of Rohingya Muslims but served less than the journalists who uncovered the killing.
Description: "Seven soldiers jailed for killing a group of Rohingya Muslims have been freed from a Myanmar jail despite serving less time than two reporters imprisoned for exposing the massacre. Prisons department director-general Myint Soe told journalists the soldiers were "no longer in detention", declining to give any further information. Four officers and three soldiers were sentenced in 2018 to 10 years with hard labour for killing 10 Rohingya villagers, with army chief Min Aung Hlaing and civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi holding up the sentence as evidence of accountability within the military. Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, who helped expose the killing, were jailed last September for seven years on charges linked to their reporting. They were granted a presidential pardon this month after spending over 500 days behind bars. The killings unfolded during a bloody army crackdown in 2017 that forced some 740,000 Rohingya to flee across the border into Bangladesh. UN investigators say the violence warrants the prosecution of top generals for "genocide" and the International Criminal Court (ICC) has started a preliminary probe..."
Source/publisher: TRT World
Date of entry/update: 2019-07-29
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Title: The Rohingya: Silent Abuse
Description: "Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, has a population of around 51 million people. The Burman ethnic group constitutes around two-thirds of this figure and controls the military and the government. But there are also more than 135 ethnic groups in the country, each with their own culture. Many of them have become internally displaced by government moves to exploit land, provoking long-standing friction. In fact, the conflict between Myanmar's ethnic minorities and the ruling Burmese majority represent one of the world's longest ongoing conflicts. One group, the Muslim Rohingya, are not recognised as an ethnic nationality of Myanmar, so they suffer from arguably the worst discrimination and human rights abuses of all. The Rohingya population is somewhere between one and two million and they are living mainly in Rakhine State in the north of the country. In this film, Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent Salam Hindawi goes to Myanmar to investigate the situation surrounding the Rohingya. Myanmar has been tightly controlled for decades and Hindawi has enormous difficulties gaining access to certain areas of the country that the government simply doesn't want anyone from outside to see..."
Source/publisher: Al Jazeera English
Date of entry/update: 2019-07-29
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Title: UN Condemns Itself Over Myanmar
Description: "The United Nations has condemned itself for what a new report calls an obviously dysfunctional performance; one that led to what the UN says was a 'genocidal' campaign against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar..."
Source/publisher: The Newsmakers
Date of entry/update: 2019-07-29
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Title: The UN Fails Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims
Description: "The United Nations condemns its own actions in Myanmar. Could learning the lessons of the past have prevented a genocide?..."
Source/publisher: The Newsmakers via TRT World
Date of entry/update: 2019-07-29
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Title: US impose sanctions on Myanmar military leaders
Description: "The United States announced sanctions on Tuesday against the Myanmar military's Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing and other leaders it said were responsible for extrajudicial killings of Rohingya Muslims, barring them from entry to the United States..."
Source/publisher: TRT World
Date of entry/update: 2019-07-29
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Title: The “ethnic cleansing” of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims, explained
Description: "The Rohingya have been systematically driven out by the Myanmar government leading to the fastest growing humanitarian crisis in recent years. Subscribe to our channel! http://goo.gl/0bsAjO Vox.com is a news website that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines. Check out http://www.vox.com to get up to speed on everything from Kurdistan to the Kim Kardashian app..."
Source/publisher: Vox
Date of entry/update: 2019-07-29
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Title: History of Rakhine State and the Origin of the Rohingya Muslims
Summary: "Myanmar is the least developed country in the Southeast Asia. In the 1947 Constitution, the name of the country was proclaimed Burma, and in 1989, the military junta changed the name to Myanmar (...
Description: "Myanmar is the least developed country in the Southeast Asia. In the 1947 Constitution, the name of the country was proclaimed Burma, and in 1989, the military junta changed the name to Myanmar (Ullah, 2011). Some scholars believe that Burma is derived from the eponym ‘Brahma Desha’ after Brahma, one of the gods of the Hindu trinity. Some other scholars believe that “Burma” is the name derived from the spoken form of Bamar (the language of the majority ethnic group), and was also used during the independence movement in 1948. “Myanmar” is taken from the literary form of the language, and is supposed to be more neutral than Burma. “Myanmar” supposedly is associated with democratic and federalist ideologies, while “Myanmar” recalls military enforcement and hierarchal units (Dittmer, 2010). The official name of the country according to the 2008 constitution is “The Republic of the Union of Myanmar” (Government of Myanmar [GoM], 2008). Rakhine is a state located in the west coast of Myanmar, one of the poorest regions of the country. Its area is 14,200 square miles (Islam, 1999). In Rakhine, it is estimated that 59.7% of the 3.8 million people are Buddhist, 35.6% are Muslim Rohingya, and the remainder are from other religious groups. The Rohingya Muslims did not originate from just one single racial stock. They are the mixture of diverse ethnic groups, including Arabs, Moghuls, and Bengalis (Alam, 2013). In Myanmar there are 7 million Muslims, which are 15% of the total populations of the country, and half of them live in Rakhine (Jaha, 1994). Buddhist nationalism began to emerge in response to British colonial rule, and saw Buddhists identifying with Burmese culture and history. During the colonial period, the Burmese military Tatmadaw and the founders of several armies including Aung San were patronized and trained by the military of imperial Japan to defeat Allied forces and the British colonials. Myanmar’s Buddhist nationalism was influenced by Japanese fascism (Zarni, 2013). The Rohingya crisis is not only on religion but also on economical and political related (Shams, 2015). The Buddhists of Myanmar claim that the Rohingya are economically developed, and their culture is under siege than the Rohingya. The Rohingya are confronted with a deeplyentrenched Islam phobia with Rakhine in Myanmar. Myanmar is surrounded by some Islamic countries, such as Bangladesh, Malaysia, and Indonesia. The Buddhists think that if any Islamic country attacks Myanmar, the Rohingya will fight against Myanmar. History of Rakhine State and the Origin of the Rohingya Muslims 21 As a result, they are culturally discriminated, economically exploited, and politically sidelined by the GoM (Wolf, 2017). There have been many debates on the origins of the Rohingya and the Arakan State. The two conflicting theories are that i) Rohingyas are illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh (Saw, 2011; Ahmed, 2012), and ii) Rohingyas are native to Arakan, and are descendents of the original Muslim converted on Ramree Island (Bahar, 2010a; Forster, 2011). Although there are two opposing debates about the origin of the Rohingya, it is true that a large number of Muslims have resided in the Arakan for hundreds of years (Azad & Jasmine, 2013; Leitich, 2014). The sectarian conflict has been especially focused in the Muslim areas that lie in the northern part of Rakhine State: Maungdaw, Rathedaung, and Buthidaung Townships (Human Rights Watch [HRW], 2013). During the last few years the Rohingya ethnic violence in Rakhine became extensive, which has transformed into ethnic cleansing and genocide (Nawoyski, 2013)..."
Source/publisher: The Indonesian Journal of Southeast Asian Studies
Date of entry/update: 2019-07-28
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Title: Lost generation of Rohingya kids face a bleak future
Sub-title: The 500,000 children in refugee camps in Bangladesh have no access to formal education; only 30% have access to lessons
Description: "The boy’s eyes lit up when he talked about his dream of becoming a doctor. Seven-year-old “Mohammad” – not his real name – is a Rohingya Muslim from Myanmar. I met him at a learning center at a refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, in early July 2019. After sharing his aspirations, Mohammed quickly remembered reality. “I know my dreams will never come true,” he said with a faint smile. Mohammed is among the more than 700,000 Rohingya who have taken refuge in Bangladesh after an ethnic cleansing campaign of rape, killing and torture by the Myanmar military in mid-2017. They joined the more than 200,000 Rohingyas who had previously fled Myanmar’s brutal efforts to rid the Buddhist-majority country of this marginalized Muslim minority. 500,000 kids living in limbo Of the newly arrived Rohingya, three-quarters are women and children, according to the United Nations. In a noteworthy humanitarian gesture, the Bangladeshi government has given refuge to these persecuted people. Aided by Bangladeshi community organizations, various UN agencies and other international donors, the Rohingya have been receiving shelter, food, clothes and basic health care since the massive exodus in 2017. This essential care, which cost an estimated US$920.5 million in 2019 represents a gargantuan global effort. Still, the resources are woefully inadequate. Most Bangladeshi refugee camps are overcrowded and, as a result, unhygienic..."
Source/publisher: Asia Times
Date of entry/update: 2019-07-28
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Title: Rohingya crisis: Bangladesh seeks UK’s leadership to find solution
Sub-title: The foreign minister expressed his confidence to steer the bilateral relations to a dynamic new phase
Description: "Bangladesh has sought UK’s global leadership in ensuring the early and sustained return of the Rohingyas to their homeland in Myanmar with dignity, rights and security. Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen sought the personal interventions of Dominic Raab, UK’s new Secretary of States for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs here on Friday. Bangladesh is currently hosting nearly 1.2 million Rohingyas. Most of them came here after Myanmar launched a bloody offensive against the mainly-Muslim ethnic minority in late August 2017. Rohingyas and rights groups have accused the military and their local collaborators of killing, shooting, rape, arson, torture and loot. Myanmar denies the charges. The then top UN human rights official dubbed Myanmar’s treatment of Rohingyas as textbook example of ethnic cleansing. Myanmar has refused to accept Rohingyas as its citizens despite the fact that they have been living there for generations. Dhaka and Nay Pyi Taw have signed an agreement to repatriate the Rohingyas but there has been no visible progress so far..."
Source/publisher: Dhaka Tribune
Date of entry/update: 2019-07-27
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Title: Rohingya repatriation soon amid mounting pressure on Myanmar, hopes FM
Sub-title: Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen on Thursday reiterated his hope that Myanmar will soon start taking back its nationals from Bangladesh as global pressure on the neighbouring country is mounting.
Description: ""I'm always optimistic. I'm hoping that the repatriation process will start soon," he said, adding that initially there was less pressure on Myanmar but it is mounting on them now. The foreign minister was addressing as the chief a dissemination workshop titled "The Rohingya Refugee Crisis and Its Impact on the Host Community" held at Brac Centre Inn jointly organised by Policy Research Institute of Bangladesh (PRI) and UNDP. Bangladesh is now hosting around 1.2 million Rohingyas and most of them entered Bangladesh since August 25, 2017. Dr Momen said development projects both in Bangladesh and Myanmar will be affected if uncertainty prevails with pockets of possible radicalisation due to longer stay of Rohingyas in Bangladesh. He said Bangladesh is asking the neighbours and international community to help resolve the Rohingya crisis as quickly as possible. The Foreign Minister also said the projects of Japan and China will also be affected if this problem remains unresolved and they, for their own interest, should ask Myanmar to take back their nationals. Terming Myanmar a friendly country, Dr Momen said Myanmar took back their nationals in the past though not a single person has been repatriated this time. Referring to Prime Minister's recent China visit, the Foreign Minister said China sees political will in Myanmar to resolve the Rohingya crisis and is willing to assist the repatriation process. "We’ve achieved many things through discussion and dialogue. Therefore, I'm hopeful that we’ll be able to repatriate Rohingyas," he said mentioning that Bangladesh will not force anybody to leave. PRI Chairman Dr Zaidi Sattar said the global community must continue its pressure on the government of Myanmar to take back the forciblydisplaced Rohingyas from Bangladesh. "These displaced people must be repatriated to their homeland on condition that their return is safe, secure and dignified," he said, adding that the repatriation of 500-600 people a day could be a good beginning. PRI Research Director Dr MA Razzaque presented the report. UNDP Resident Representative Sudipto Mukherjee and Research Initiatives Bangladesh (RIB) Executive Director Dr Meghna Guhathakurta, among others, spoke on the occasion..."
Source/publisher: The Daily Star
Date of entry/update: 2019-07-27
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Title: Rohingya Crisis: Dhaka seeks NAM, ASEAN member states' role
Summary: "While referring to the oppression against the Palestinian people and violations of international law and international human rights law in the occupied Palestinian territory, he cautioned that mere...
Description: "While referring to the oppression against the Palestinian people and violations of international law and international human rights law in the occupied Palestinian territory, he cautioned that mere expression of concerns for the misdeeds in Palestine and other places in the world did not stop these from recurring again. "Therefore, we must ensure that nations respect international law, and the international community should take necessary measures to hold accountable the perpetrators responsible for crimes against humanity such as those took place against the Rohingyas in Rakhaine State of Myanmar," he said. Ambassador Masud said was delivering the national statement at the debate of the Ministerial Meeting of the NAM Coordinating Bureau in Caracas, Venezuela on Sunday, said a media release on Monday. The theme of the debate was, "Promotion and consolidation of peace through respect for international law." Stating that misunderstanding and cross cultural ignorance are among the root causes of conflicts that they see today, he said international law which is an essential tool for the protection, maintenance and consolidation of peace draws upon the principles of peace expressed by great scholars and thinkers of the past. "Leaders of our past generation placed them in the social and political context of today to dissipate the clouds of prejudice, ignorance and vested interests that stand in the way of world peace and harmony. It is thus a very precious possession of all human beings, which must be carefully protected and nurtured." He recalled the decision taken by the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman to join NAM in 1973 and mentioned that inspired by his legacy, Bangladesh still finds the activities of Non-aligned Movement relevant even the world is facing many new and critical challenges including weaponization, securitization of frontier technologies, climate change, protectionism, clashes among cultures etc. He also highlighted successes in various socio-economic sectors under the dynamic leadership of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. The Ministerial meeting was attended by 16 ministers and other high level representatives of 85 countries from Africa, Asia, Oceania, Latin America, Europe and the Caribbean region. The Ministerial meeting was chaired by the Foreign Minister of Venezuela, Jorge Arreaza Montserrat. President of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro also addressed the meeting. The Ministerial meeting was preceded by the senior officials meeting where the NAM outcome document was negotiated. The Ministerial meeting is expected to adopt the NAM outcome document and a political declaration at the end of the meeting..."
Source/publisher: The Daily Star
Date of entry/update: 2019-07-24
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Title: BHRN Welcomes UN Human Rights Council Statements from Yanghee Lee
Description: "Burma Human Rights Network applauds the July 3rd statements at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva by the UN Special Rapporteur on Myanmar, Yanghee Lee. In her statements to the council, the Special Rapporteur directed strong criticism against both the Burmese Military and Government for crimes committed in conflict and systematic failures and abuses by the central government and authorities. “Ms. Lee’s statements are greatly appreciated in a time where many in the international community struggle to speak the truth. Her acknowledgment of the ongoing crimes and wrongs done to religious and ethnic minorities is heartening for these communities to know that they have not been forgotten”, said BHRN’s Executive Director, Kyaw Win. Among her many criticisms, Ms. Lee called out the Burmese Government’s discrimination and harassment of Burmese Muslims, atrocities carried out by the Burmese Military in Rakhine State, attacks and arrests of peaceful protesters and activists, and the governments major shortcomings in business pursuits negatively impacting the environment and safety of villagers in affected areas. Ms. Lee also took the time to remind the world of the dire situation of the Rohingya living as refugees in Bangladesh who continue to suffer as the world neglects their needs. Most importantly, Ms. Lee reiterated a call for Burma to be referred to the International Criminal Court for crimes outlined in her statements. BHRN urges Ms. Lee to also address further the issue of Burmese Muslims living on the Thai side of the border who have been denied citizenship and documentation by Burma, leaving them in limbo and vulnerable to undo punishment by Thai authorities. The international community should hear Ms. Lee’s calls and act upon them. The recommendation to refer Burma to the ICC or the establishment of a separate tribunal is both necessary and just. The powers of the world should act to pursue these referrals and ensure they can pass. The international community must cease business as usual with Burma as long as these crimes are ongoing and until justice is obtained for the victims of their crimes. While many hoped for reform in Burma with the rise of the National League for Democracy, it is past time that we view the country with clear eyes and admit that the free and democratic Burma the world hoped would emerge will not come from the current establishment..."
Source/publisher: Progressive Voice via "Burma Human Rights Network"
Date of entry/update: 2019-07-20
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Title: Burma Human Rights Network Slams Myanmar’s Use of Nationality Verification Card for Rohingya
Description: "The Burma Human Rights Network, in cooperation with Queen Mary University of London’s International State Crime Initiative, is proud to reveal its latest report, NVC: A Barrier To Rohingya Repatriation focusing on Burma’s deeply troubling National Verification Card (NVC) process. The NVC is often portrayed as a stepping stone to citizenship for the Rohingya but BHRN believes this process to further marginalize the Rohingya and that it ultimately enhances apartheid conditions in Rakhine State. BHRN disputes claims by the Burmese authorities that the NVC is being used as a stepping stone to citizenship for the Rohingya or that it has any useful purpose as a tool to verify the identities of returning refugees. “Burma has convinced many in the world that the NVC process will help the Rohingya to become citizens and grant them greater rights in the country but this is clearly false. The NVC has been in use for years as a tool to identify Rohingya as foreigners and they have not received any greater rights as a result. The international community must not go along with Burma on this endeavor and should instead insist upon citizenship and full rights for the Rohingya,” said BHRN’s executive director, Kyaw Win. For this report, BHRN interviewed 25 Rohingyas. In Bangladesh, BHRN interviewed 18 refugees, 5 from Buthidaung, 6 from Maungdaw and 7 from Ratheadaung about the extensive documentation the Burmese authorities have of Rohingya who lived in Northern Rakhine State since the 1990s as part of an annual survey conducted by authorities called “SweTinSit.” BHRN interviewed an additional 7 Rohingya currently living inside of Burma, both with and without National Verification Cards, about how the identification system has affected their day to day lives and the pressures they were under to accept them. The SweTinSit survey demonstrates that Burma has extensive records of Rohingya living in the state prior to the mass exoduses of Rohingya fleeing genocidal campaigns by the Burmese Military in 2016 and 2017. These records negate the need for NVC to verify returning refugees as they contain extensive records of who is to return and what their original locations were. These records also detail births of Rohingya inside of Burma whose claims to citizenship should be unquestionable..."
Source/publisher: Progressive Voice via "Burma Human Rights Network"
Date of entry/update: 2019-07-20
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Title: ONGOING DISCRIMINATION AND PERSECUTION EXACERBATED BY FRESH MILITARY VIOLATIONS IN RAKHINE STATE: AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL ORAL STATEMENT AT THE 41ST SESSION OF THE HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL
Description: "Mr. President, We thank the High Commissioner for her update. Crimes against humanity are ongoing against the estimated 600,000 Rohingya still living in Rakhine State, in the form of the systematic denial of their rights, including to equality, to a nationality, to freedom of movement, and access to adequate healthcare, education, and work opportunities. Their rights to participate in public life and to manifest religious beliefs continue to be routinely violated in what amounts to a system of apartheid.1 We are appalled that seven years after they were forced from their homes some 128,000 people – mostly Rohingya – remain confined to squalid detention camps within Rakhine State, reliant on humanitarian assistance for their survival. The Myanmar authorities have not engaged in genuine efforts to implement recommendations of the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State, led by the late Dr. Kofi Annan. The authorities claim to be implementing 81 of the report’s 88 recommendations, however the reality on the ground is very different. Humanitarian access and access for independent journalists and human rights monitors remains severely restricted, and Rohingya and other Muslim communities are systematically discriminated against and do not have freedom of movement. There has been no progress in restoring Rohingya’s citizenship rights or reviewing the deeply discriminatory 1982 Citizenship Law. Mr. President, Since the start of 2019 there has been major escalation in fighting between the Myanmar military and the Arakan Army, an ethnic Rakhine armed group, in Rakhine State. Amnesty International has documented serious violations – including war crimes – by the military against civilians from all communities, including the Rohingya.2 These new violations highlight the institutionalised and systematic nature of military violations in Myanmar, as well as the consequences of ongoing impunity. Indeed, some recent violations have been committed by soldiers from the same units implicated in atrocities against the Rohingya population in late 2017. Since 21 June 2019, Myanmar authorities have shut down internet access in conflict-affected areas of Rakhine and Chin States. The situation has created an information black hole and raises urgent concerns about the safety of civilians given the ongoing conflict.3 Rakhine State is not safe for the communities still living there, it is most certainly not safe for refugees to return to. Madam High Commissioner, Given the conclusions of the Rosenthal report, which found “systemic and structural” UN failures in Myanmar,4 how do you think the UN can better integrate human rights into its work in the country and beyond? Thank you, Mr. President..."
Source/publisher: Progressive Voice via "Amnesty International" (AI Index: ASA 16/0642/2019)
Date of entry/update: 2019-07-20
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Title: Update on Myanmar at the 41st Session of the Human Rights Council
Description: "The situation of the Rohingya community remains dire. More than 730,000 Rohingya men, women and children continue to be confined to desperate humanitarian conditions in Bangladesh, whose government’s efforts in hosting the refugee community in Cox’s Bazar is to be saluted and commended. And as OHCHR continues to document, Rohingya continue to flee northern Rakhine State, who report ongoing serious discrimination, and continuous and systematic violations of their fundamental rights and freedoms. While the Memorandum of Understanding signed between the Government of Myanmar, UNHCR and UNDP on the return of the Rohingya population was extended for an additional year on 28 May 2019, the conditions conducive for refugee return simply do not yet exist and the implementation of programs under the MoU have been tightly constrained. The Government of Myanmar has taken some steps to implement some recommendations made by the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State (appointed by the Government) but has yet to tackle the most fundamental issues that must be addressed if the requisite enabling environment for returns is to be in place. Excellencies, In northern Rakhine State, around 240,000 Rohingya remain from a previous population of approximately one million. Verifying their situation remains difficult due to lack of access by OHCHR and other international actors. However, we continue to receive and verify reports from a variety of sources, including reports on Sexual and Gender Based Violence related cases allegedly committed by members of the security forces. In a continuation of attacks, it was reported that on 2 and 9 May 2019 Rohingya homes and shops were burned in Maungdaw and Buthidaung townships. Later, on 28 May 2019, reports alleged that the remaining Rohingya houses in Taung Bazar, Buthidaung township, were also burned to the ground. Our information suggests that the authorities have taken no steps to investigate these attacks. Disappearances of Rohingya continue to be reported. In May, a Rohingya man newly arrived in Bangladesh, told my colleagues that he fled Myanmar rather than comply with a summons he and three other individuals received to report to the local police station. The three others did report to the police station and their families have not heard from them since. OHCHR has received numerous reports that Rohingya face harassment, threats, physical violence and at times restrictions on their freedom of movement when they leave their residences to try to farm their lands, fish or conduct their businesses. This also limits their access to essential, life sustaining services, including to humanitarian assistance on which many now depend. In another concerning development, it was reported that the authorities in northern Rakhine State went house-to-house in January to revise the official household registration lists, allegedly removing the names of those not present. If substantiated, the ramifications of this intervention are very serious. For many Rohingya, the household registration lists may be the only official record that establishes their place of origin and rights to their property within Myanmar. Without such proof of residence, returning to their places of origin or reclaim of their property may well be impossible while access to basic services, including healthcare, education, or other essential Government services can be denied. The situation of the estimated 126,000 Rohingya, mostly IDPs, who live in central Rakhine is of equal concern. The appalling living conditions that they are forced to endure – lack of access to basic services, including poor levels of nutrition, water, adequate shelter, healthcare, and education – are once again more acute during the monsoon season..."
Source/publisher: Progressive Voice via "UN High Commissioner for Human Rights"
Date of entry/update: 2019-07-20
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Title: US bans Myanmar army chief over Rohingya rights abuses
Sub-title: Washington ups pressure on Naypyitaw by sanctioning Senior General Min Aung Hlaing and three other top military officers
Description: "The United States on Tuesday banned visits by Myanmar’s army chief and three other top officers due to their role in the “ethnic cleansing” of the Rohingya minority, urging accountability for their brutal campaign. The State Department said it took action against army chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing and the others after finding credible evidence they were involved in the violence two years ago that led about 740,000 Rohingya to flee across the border to Bangladesh. “With this announcement, the United States is the first government to publicly take action with respect to the most senior leadership of the Burmese military,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, referring to the country’s previous name. “We remain concerned that the Burmese government has taken no actions to hold accountable those responsible for human rights violations and abuses, and there are continued reports of the Burmese military committing human rights violations and abuses throughout the country,” he said in a statement. The sanctions are the most visible sign of US disappointment with Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, since it launched political reforms in 2011, with the military junta reconciling with Washington and eventually allowing an elected political leadership. Also sanctioned were Deputy Commander-in-Chief Soe Win, Brigadier General Than Oo and Brigadier General Aung Aung as well as the families of all four officers. Buddhist-majority Myanmar refuses to grant the mostly Muslim Rohingya citizenship or basic rights and refers to them as “Bengalis,” inferring that the Rohingya are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. UN investigators say the violence warrants the prosecution of top generals for “genocide” and the International Criminal Court has started a preliminary probe..."
Source/publisher: "Asia Times"
Date of entry/update: 2019-07-17
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Title: US imposes sanctions on Myanmar's military leaders over Rohingya abuses
Sub-title: Steps are the strongest the country has taken in response to massacres of minority Rohingya in 2017
Description: "Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, has announced sanctions on the Myanmar military’s commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing and other military leaders over extrajudicial killings of Rohingya Muslims, barring them from entry to the United States. The steps, which also covered Min Aung Hlaing’s deputy, Soe Win, and two other senior commanders and their families, are the strongest the United States has taken in response to massacres of minority Rohingya in Myanmar, also known as Burma. “We remain concerned that the Burmese government has taken no actions to hold accountable those responsible for human rights violations and abuses, and there are continued reports of the Burmese military committing human rights violations and abuses throughout the country,” Pompeo said in a statement. He said a recent disclosure that Min Aung Hlaing ordered the release of soldiers convicted of extrajudicial killings at the village of Inn Din during the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya in 2017 was “one egregious example of the continued and severe lack of accountability for the military and its senior leadership.” “The commander-in-chief released these criminals after only months in prison, while the journalists who told the world about the killings in Inn Din were jailed for more than 500 days,” Pompeo said..."
Source/publisher: "The Guardian"
Date of entry/update: 2019-07-17
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Title: US sanctions four Myanmar military leaders for human rights violations
Description: "The State Department on Tuesday sanctioned four top Myanmar military officials for human rights abuses against the Rohingya population in the country's northern Rakhine State. In a statement, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the officials were responsible "for gross human rights violations," including extrajudicial killings, during the campaign of violence beginning in August 2017. Under the designations, Commander-in-Chief of Myanmar's Armed Forces Min Aung Hlaing, Deputy Commander-in-Chief Soe Win, Brigadier General Than Oo, Brigadier General Aung Aung and their families will not be permitted to enter the United States. A senior State Department official told reporters Tuesday that they believe the designations "send a message to other Burmese officials that should they commit atrocities or other serious human rights abuses, there will be consequences under US law." However, in a statement, Pompeo noted that the US remains "concerned that the Burmese government has taken no actions to hold accountable those responsible for human rights violations and abuses, and there are continued reports of the Burmese military committing human rights violations and abuses throughout the country." The violence against the Rohingya was "extreme, large-scale, widespread, and seemingly geared toward both terrorizing the population and driving out the Rohingya residents," a US State Department report from September 2018 found. The report suggested that Myanmar's security forces engaged in a "well planned and coordinated" campaign of violence against the Muslim minority that included mass killings, sexual violence and destruction of villages. Information collected by a UN fact-finding mission "suggests that the estimate of up to 10,000 deaths is a conservative one," their extensive report from August 2018 noted. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees fled into neighboring Bangladesh. As of June, more than 900,000 remain in Cox's Bazar, according to a UN report..."
Source/publisher: "CNN"
Date of entry/update: 2019-07-17
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Title: Bangladesh: Rohingya Face Monsoon Floods, Landslides
Sub-title: Donor Support Critical for Refugees’ Safety, Protection
Description: Rohingya refugees in crowded camps in Bangladesh are at serious risk of displacement and injury from monsoon flooding and landslides, Human Rights Watch said today. Since early July 2019, flooding and landslides have displaced nearly 6,000 refugees in the camps near Cox’s Bazar, damaged over 3,500 shelters, and killed two people, including a child. The International Organization for Migration reported over 400 landslides, 60 windstorms, and at least 28 incidents of flooding in the first 10 days of July, affecting over 22,000 people. Bangladesh authorities should relocate Rohingya refugees to safer areas near the refugee camps and allow permanent structures inside the camps for protection during heavy monsoon seasons, Human Rights Watch said. “Monsoons and landslides are making the Rohingya refugees’ difficult situation even more precarious,” said Bill Frelick, refugee rights director at Human Rights Watch. “Support to Bangladesh from donor governments is crucial for making sure there will be continuing assistance to the refugee population.” Myanmar’s campaign of ethnic cleansing, beginning August 2017, forced over 740,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee to neighboring Bangladesh. The Myanmar government’s unwillingness to address the systemic persecution and other serious rights violations against the Rohingya leaves the refugees stranded in Bangladesh without prospects for a safe or dignified return in the foreseeable future. Over the past two years, aid agencies have improved shelter conditions, built safer infrastructure, and developed monsoon preparedness in the camps. However, the humanitarian response remains critically underfunded. The 2019 Joint Response Plan for the Rohingya humanitarian crisis has received only a third, or US$301 million, of the $920 million needed to meet the needs of the Rohingya refugees and host communities in Bangladesh this year. The Joint Response Plan notes that, “The shelter materials and disaster risk reduction training provided to the refugees in 2018 are insufficient for protection against adverse weather conditions.” Earlier in July, Human Rights Watch spoke to 10 Rohingya refugees across four settlements within the Kutupalong-Balukhali Expansion Camp. All expressed concerns about inadequate assistance. They described a shortage of drinking water and a looming health crisis due to flooded toilets, which foster disease outbreaks. Several learning centers have been inundated and children have stopped attending because of muddy conditions in their classrooms. UNICEF reported that the education of 60,000 children has been interrupted, with over 750 learning centers partially damaged and 5 heavily damaged. One of the refugees interviewed said that when a group of refugees approached a Bangladeshi camp official after several homes were destroyed, he told them not to complain. “We have been taking shelter in nearby Bangladeshi schools or with relatives,” the man said.
Source/publisher: Human Rights Watch
Date of entry/update: 2019-07-14
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Title: Rohingya refugee crisis is a ticking time bomb
Sub-title: Squalid and bulging refugee camps in Bangladesh risk morphing into epicenters of extremism similar to those seen in Palestine in the Middle East
Description: "Myanmar’s Rohingya refugee crisis, characterized by United Nations’ investigators as “ethnic cleansing” with possible “genocidal intent”, could finally be redounding on the country’s powerful and autonomous top brass. But while Western nations press to penalize Myanmar’s latest abuses, definitively ending a short-lived engagement with the long-isolated county, neighboring states are taking a more self-interested approach. The International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague said last month that it plans to initiate pre-trial procedures which could lead to legal action against Myanmar’s military leaders for mass atrocities. A conviction against top soldiers, including military commander Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, could spur renewed Western sanctions, soon after the US and European Union lifted their previous punitive measures in diplomatic reward for implementing democratic reforms. The government in Naypyitaw is clearly in damage control mode. Reports suggest it will send a delegation to Cox’s Bazar in southeastern Bangladesh, where at least 700,000 Rohingya refugees have been housed in squalid camps since being driven out of Myanmar in 2016 and 2017..."
Source/publisher: Asia Times
Date of entry/update: 2019-07-14
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Title: Rohingya Refugee Crisis: Contexts, Problems, and Solutions
Description: "Background: There are many problems related to statelessness and refugees in Asia, among which are the following: Assam in India; Myanmar-Thailand border; and Rohingyas in Myanmar. The Muslim majority Rohingyas have been living in the Rakhine state for as long as they, their parents, their grandparents, and their great grandparents can remember. Their land is in between Bangladesh on its west and the rest of Myanmar on its east. Myanmar is home to a multiplicity of ethnicities, religions, and languages. Research Questions: This paper responds to the following queries regarding the Rohingya refugee crisis: 1. What are the historical and current contexts that gave rise to the Rohingya crisis? 2. What were the causes and effects of the problem? 3. What are the proposed actions to resolve the current crisis? Objective: To answer the above questions, this paper presents the contexts, problems, and proposed solutions related to the Rohingya crisis. Literature Search: Since this crisis is still brewing, there is a gap in the academic journal on this matter, which this paper seeks to fill. Most of the literature cited are from the news media outlets, such as The Atlantic, BBC, Democracy Now, El Diario, Frontline PBS, The Guardian, El Mundo, El País, New York Times, and the Washington Post, to name a few. Insider views from Myanmar are also cited, including publication in the English language, such as the Irrawaddy. From the news sources reviewed, this paper analyzes, organizes, and synthesizes the current state of the literature about the Rohingya refugee crisis, which scrutinizes (1) the historical and current contexts, (2) the causes and effects of the problem which emerged, and (3) the proposed agenda to solve the refugee crisis besetting the Rohingyas. The central focus of this paper was the major events surrounding the refugee crisis which took place in 2017, looking back at the historical contexts that led to this situation as well as the synthesizing the major proposals to solve this refugee crisis..."
Source/publisher: Literature Search
Date of entry/update: 2019-07-12
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Title: Myanmar/Bangladesh: Older people denied dignity in camps after facing military atrocities
Description: "As the Myanmar military has committed atrocity crimes during operations in Kachin, Rakhine, and Shan States, older people confront particular risks. Some older people stay behind as villages empty at word of a military advance, often due to their strong ties to home and land or to being physically unable to flee. After finding them, soldiers arbitrarily detain, torture, and at times kill older women and men. A 67-year-old ethnic Rakhine farmer who stayed behind when most of his village fled in March 2019, in part because a severe hearing impairment meant he had not heard fighting nearby between the military and Arakan Army (AA), described what Myanmar soldiers did after forcing him out of his home: “When I got to where the captain was, the soldiers tied my hands… behind my back, with the rope that’s used for cattle. They asked me, ‘Did the AA come to the village?’ I said no, I’d never seen [the AA]… and then the soldiers beat me.” During the military’s attack on the Rohingya population in 2017, many older women and men were burned alive in their homes. Mariam Khatun, an ethnic Rohingya woman around 50 years old, fled to the nearby forest with her three children when Myanmar soldiers entered her village in Maungdaw Township. “My parents were left behind in the home,” she said. “I had two young children, how could I take them as well? … My parents were physically unable to move.” As she and her children reached the river next to the village, Mariam Khatun looked back and saw the village burning, knowing her parents were still inside their home. Amnesty International’s review of lists of people killed from different Rohingya villages indicates older people often suffered disproportionately. A quantitative study by Médecins Sans Frontières found similarly, showing that in the month after the military began its brutal operations on 25 August 2017, the highest rates of mortality – by far – were among Rohingya women and men age 50 and older. For older people in Rakhine and Kachin States who have fled, the journey through Myanmar’s mountainous borderlands was often difficult, worsened by the military blocking main routes and restricting humanitarian access. Amnesty International documented several cases of older people dying as they tried to flee to safety, unable to access health care..."
Source/publisher: Amnesty International
Date of publication: 2019-06-18
Date of entry/update: 2019-06-21
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Title: Dalai Lama on peace, youth, and the Rohingya crisis
Description: The world's most violent conflict zones also often happen to be places with high populations of young people, according to the United States Institute of Peace (USIP). Despite the challenges of growing up in turmoil, though, many young people are striving to make a difference and several of them this month travelled to India to seek guidance from Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama. The young peacebuilders - from countries across Africa, Asia, South America and the Middle East - visited the Dalai Lama's compound in Dharamsala to meet each other and discuss the challenges they face in the second such event organised by the USIP. Participants say they're looking forward to building both the practical skills and the personal resilience needed to foster peace in their home countries. So how do you build peace and what can these young people learn from one of the most famous leaders in the world?
Dalai Lama
Source/publisher: Al Jazeera (The Stream)
Date of publication: 2017-11-07
Date of entry/update: 2019-06-20
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Title: A BRIEF AND INDEPENDENT INQUIRY INTO THE INVOLVEMENT OF THE UNITED NATIONS IN MYANMAR FROM 2010 TO 2018
Gert Rosenthal
Source/publisher: Office of the UN Secretary General
Date of publication: 2019-05-29
Date of entry/update: 2019-06-19
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Title: UN chief accepts independent report on Myanmar, highlighting ‘systemic’ failure surrounding Rohingya crisis
Knut Ostby
Source/publisher: UN News
Date of publication: 2019-06-17
Date of entry/update: 2019-06-19
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Title: Life-saving assistance for conflict affected people in Northern Rakhine
Description: "A series of events prompted by the armed attacks against the Myanmar border security forces by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) on 25 August 2017 in the northern part of Rakhine State, precipitated a massive movement of Muslims and other ethnic minority groups making the current situation in Northern Rakhine as one of the fast-growing humanitarian crises in the history. As a result, it is estimated that approximately 700 000 refugees had crossed the border into Bangladesh. People who remained in their villages are facing substantial hardships, including significantly reduced access to markets and agricultural land, which have created a compounding negative effect on their livelihoods and increased the need for immediate humanitarian assistance. While the majority of humanitarian actors active in Northern Townships of Rakhine State focused on provision of immediate food assistance, FAO and its implementing partners MHDO and LBVD supported the local agriculture productions to stabilize and increase the availability of foods..."
Source/publisher: Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
Date of publication: 2018-06-01
Date of entry/update: 2019-06-15
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Title: UN & Asean Continue To Exclude Rohingya Refugee Voices
Description: "Yesterday AFP media reported a leaked copy of the ASEAN Preliminary Needs Assessment for Repatriation in Rakhine State. The document is secret and we Rohingya refugees were not consulted in the assessment. The ASEAN say Myanmar will only accept 500,000 Rohingya back to Myanmar but there are over 1 million of us living in refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar. The experts in the UN IFFM report last year said 725,000 Rohingya fled violence and persecution in Myanmar in 2017 and 2018. So we want to ask what will ASEAN and Myanmar do about other 500,000 Rohingya refugees in Bangladsh? The ASEAN report congratulate Myanmar for increase the security forces in Rakhine in Rakhine State. Rohingya has been victims of genocide by Myanmar security forces for decades. What will ASEAN and Myanmar do to stop these forces from continuing the genocide against Rohingya when we return home? The ASEAN report also does not use our ethnic name: Rohingya. Many ASEAN countries like Malaysia and Indonesia visit the camp to take photo with us and call us Rohingya to our face but now they refuse to give us dignity. Why is ASEAN organization not using our ethnic name? Just like the recent extension of the Myanmar, UNDP and UNHCR secret MoU, Rohingya refugee leaders are not being consulted about the decision that directly affect our human rights. Why is it so difficult for ASEAN and the UN to consult us and respect our human rights and dignity? We know the answer to all of these three questions. ASEAN and UN view Roingya as a crisis and problem. They do not view us as human being with rights and dignity. We want to make it clear to the world that ASEAN and UNHCR do not speak on behalf of the Rohingya refugees. Rohingya refugees can speak for ourselves. There will be no repatriation without talking to us..."
Source/publisher: Progressive Voice via " Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace and Human Rights"
Date of publication: 2019-06-08
Date of entry/update: 2019-06-14
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Title: Wai Wai Nu, Rohingya activist: "I am not free. My community is not free. My country is not free."
Description: "Wai Wai Nu had never committed any crime, but at 18, she was told she was going to prison. She had just started law school when the sentence was handed down to her father, and by consequence, to Wai Wai, her mother, sister and brother. The family believed they would be released after a few months, but for seven years, they were forced to endure squalid, overcrowded conditions in Myanmar’s infamous Insein Prison. Her brother was sent to another prison. According to the authorities, Wai Wai’s crime was being the daughter of Kyaw Min, a school teacher and political activist from Rakhine State in western Myanmar. For the last few decades, northern Rakhine State has been the epicentre of crisis. Wai Wai’s family belongs to the marginalised Rohingya community, a community in Rakhine that continues to suffer persecution and mass displacement today. Since mid-2017, nearly one million Rohingya have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh. In March this year, UN Human Rights High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet described a situation of ‘systematic discrimination and pervasive restrictions on freedom of movement’ when delivering the Office’s report to the Human Rights Council. "When the judge first gave us our sentence, I didn’t cry, I didn’t want to show my sadness or weakness. I also didn’t want my parents to feel guilty about what happened to us. But when I arrived at the prison with my mum and my sister, we cried for three days. "When we started the sentence, I had two more years of law school to go. Each day, at the time when school would have started, I felt like I was dying inside. No youth should go to prison without committing any crime. Their place is not prison, their place is at university." Wai Wai finally earned her law degree when she left prison, graduating from Yangon East University. She looks back on her time in prison describing it as her ‘life university,’ and how it was one of the main triggers for her work as a human rights defender today. "I realised how deep discrimination was towards women in all aspects of their life: access to education, to healthcare, to economy, to politics and to decision-making processes." Today she travels the world, speaking publicly on the plight of Rohingya women and girls. She was recently in Geneva, presenting to the UN’s Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. A recent report by the Committee shows an ongoing devastating situation for Rohingya women and girls, highlighting ongoing widespread atrocities– sexual violence, deprivation of nationality, restriction of freedom of movement, and a severe lack of access to healthcare, education and housing. Despite repeated requests from the UN and the international community, the report notes that there ‘has been no evidence of measures taken to effectively prevent and address the human rights violations committed.’ As one example, it says Myanmar authorities continue to deny that any sexual violence has been committed, concluding that ‘no genuine efforts’ have been taken to hold perpetrators accountable..."
Wai Wai Nu
Source/publisher: UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
Date of publication: 2019-06-14
Date of entry/update: 2019-06-14
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Title: For Rohingya Refugees, There’s No Return in Sight
Description: "The Rohingya Muslims have faced persecution in Myanmar for decades. And yet no violence in their recent history has compared to that which the Myanmar military inflicted in August 2017. After militants from the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army attacked police and army posts in northwestern Rakhine State on August 25, the military responded by killing thousands of Rohingya civilians, raping hundreds of Rohingya women and girls, and burning entire villages to the ground. In the course of a little more than three months, more than 700,000 Rohingya were forced to flee for their lives to Bangladesh. Myanmar authorities claimed they had conducted a “clearance operation” to rid the country of militants. In reality, they were fulfilling a long-standing dream of Myanmar’s Buddhist nationalists: the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslims. The refugees joined hundreds of thousands of Rohingya who were already in Bangladesh seeking refuge after previous attacks, bringing the total to 1.2 million. Today, more Rohingya live as refugees than remain in Myanmar. Bangladesh and humanitarian organizations are struggling to provide for the needs of refugees, while Myanmar refuses to take the steps necessary to ensure the safe and voluntary return of the Rohingya to their homes in Rakhine State. International attention to the plight of the Rohingya has waned, even as the Myanmar military continues to terrorize those who remain in Rakhine State. Many Rohingya in the camps in Bangladesh say that they fear they will soon be forgotten..."
Meenakshi Ganguly, Brad Adams
Source/publisher: Human Rights Watch
Date of publication: 2019-06-11
Date of entry/update: 2019-06-11
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Title: UNICEF Myanmar Humanitarian Situation Report #4 - April 2019
Description: "During the month of April, the unilateral ceasefire called by the Myanmar Military in December for four months and then extended through June generally continued to hold in all areas of the country except Rakhine. In Kachin, this ceasefire has led to a relatively longer period of calm than has been experienced in several years. While this is a positive step forward, UNICEF and other humanitarian actors continue to have difficulty accessing different population groups—for assessment or response activities; this is particularly true in areas not under government control. In Shan State, though military action taken by Myanmar armed forces has halted, fighting and conflict among different armed ethnic groups continues to cause small-scale displacement for communities. Many of these communities have been displaced multiple times. While local communities are among the first to respond and support displaced populations, they have noted to humanitarian colleagues that their ability to provide assistance is becoming strained as resources are stretched due to the increasing frequency of displacement. In Rakhine State, fighting between the Tatmadaw and Arakan Army (AA) continued in April causing a near doubling of displaced people. Impacted townships include Mrauk-U, Minbya, Ponnagyun, Kyauktaw, Rathedaung and Buthidaung and impacts mostly ethnic Rakhine populations, though Rohingya and other minority groups have also been affected. In Chin State, the number of IDPs in Paletwa township also doubled in April. Sixteen international non-governmental organizations released a statement on 1 April urging all parties to the conflict to ensure protection of civilian and be provided with unfettered and sustained access to all affected populations. The statement further identifies that at least 95,000 people living in the affected areas are unable to access basic and essential services which could jeopardize their health, food security and wellbeing. The Government of Myanmar, local communities, the Red Cross Movement, and the World Food Programme (WFP) continue to be the providers of first response but are calling for an increase in the number of nationals and international organizations to be allowed to access populations in need. With the onset of the rainy season, agencies are particularly concerned about the potential for disease outbreaks and contamination due to overcrowded, poor shelters in some locations, and a lack of required services. Support to over 128,000 Rohingya IDPs in camps in central Rakhine continues..."
Source/publisher: reliefweb via UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund)
Date of publication: 2019-05-20
Date of entry/update: 2019-06-10
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Title: Rohingya crisis: Japan will stay beside Bangladesh
Description: Terming the prevailing situation in Myanmar’s Rakhine state complicated, Japanese Ambassador to Bangladesh Hiroyasu Izumi has said his country will stay beside the host country for immediate resolution into the crisis. “Japan is beside Bangladesh on the Rohingya issue and it will continue its supports resolving the crisis,” Izumi said while addressing a press conference at his Baridhara residence in Dhaka yesterday evening. "Claiming that Myanmar Army has been fighting against the Arakan Army for nearly two years after the exodus of Rohingyas to Bangladesh, the ambassador said the overall situation in Rakhine state has become more complicated than before. Responding to a query on whether Japan would put any pressure on Myanmar to smooth repatriation of Rohingyas, Izumi said, “Only pressure is not enough. Dialogue with Myanmar is a must to put an end to the crisis”. About safe and dignified repatriation of Rohingyas, he said, “We will support and advocate for the implementation of Kofi Annan Commission’s report resolving the Rohingya crisis. Earlier on June 5 and 6, Izumi along with a popular Japanese football player and Goodwill Ambassador of UNICEF Japan, Makato Hasebe, visited Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar. Addressing the press conference, Makato Hasebe said he was surprised to see that so many children in the refugee camps are being deprived of the rights of education. The world community should come forward to help in ensuring the education of the Rohingya children, said the internationally famed footballer..."
Hiroyasu Izumi
Source/publisher: The Daily Star
Date of publication: 2019-06-07
Date of entry/update: 2019-06-09
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Title: CATCH ME IF YOU CAN
Description: "The news that the seven soldiers who were in prison for their role in the massacre of the Rohingya villagers in Inn Dinn Village, Rakhine State, have been freed under the military justice system, is just another example of how the rule of law simply doesn’t apply to the Myanmar[1] military. Furthermore, despite years spouting hatespeech and inciting violence against the Rohingya and Muslims more broadly in Myanmar, the ultranationalist monk, Wirathu, has finally gone a step too far with the Myanmar government, and an arrest warrant has been issued. It seems, however, it is his criticism of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and his growing political prominence, as opposed to the hate and violence that he stirs, that has been the catalyst for charges against him. In this context, it is impossible to place faith in the Myanmar government-established ‘Independent Commission of Enquiry’ or any other domestic legal mechanism to adequately investigate the human rights abuses committed by the Myanmar military and address issues of accountability. In April 2018 the military announced that four officers and three soldiers had been sentenced to ten years in prison for their role in the Inn Din Massacre. The Inn Din Massacre was reported on extensively by Reuters news agency, and two Myanmar journalists working on the story – Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo – were set up in a police sting operation to stop their reporting, charged and found guilty in a Yangon court, and their appeal was ultimately turned down by the Supreme Court. They spent 500 days in prison until they were released under a Presidential Amnesty in May 2019. It turns out that committing a massacre is less of a crime than reporting on one in Myanmar. The soldiers were quietly released in November 2018, thus meaning they spent less than half the time in prison than the two journalists. A spokesperson for the President’s office confirmed on 31 May, 2019, that they had been freed at the discretion of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing. This was in accordance with the 2008 Constitution, and there is nothing in Myanmar law that this contradicts. The Government, while seemingly unaware that the soldiers had been released, are now focussing their attention on Myanmar’s chief hate purveyor, Wirathu. A regional court in Yangon issued an arrest warrant last week, charging him for sedition under Article 124(a) of the Penal Code. Despite demonstrating immense courage by publicly stating he is ready to face any charges, he is on the run and in hiding. Wirathu has a long history of using incendiary language when describing Muslims, and has toured the country for years, preaching hate to his devoted followers. He condones violence and publicly praised the perpetrators of the 2017 assassination of U Ko Ni, a prominent Muslim legal advisor to Daw Aung Suu Kyi. The charges issued come shortly after a rally in Yangon in which he offered public support for the military, stating, “soldiers protecting the country should be worshipped like Buddha.” At another recent rally he personally criticized Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, stating, “She just dresses up like a fashionista, wears makeup and walks around in stylish, high-heeled shoes, shaking her ass at foreigners.” This is not the first time he has used vile, misogynistic language at prominent women, infamously calling the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, Yanghee Lee, a “whore.” Despite his disgusting language, many in the country are questioning why he has been allowed to get away for so long with his damaging speeches that have had severe impacts on the Muslim community while publically supporting the military’s role in politics, yet once he criticizes Daw Aung Suu Kyi, the Government decides now is the time. It is the arbitrariness and timing of the charges that poses the question; Why not before? The release of the soldiers shows how domestic legal remedies are simply not adequate to address international crimes that the Myanmar military has committed. The military is the final arbiter of justice related to any action committed by its troops. Regardless of any verdict or decision by a Myanmar court, or of any recommendations that the ICOE may come up with, the Myanmar military will absolve itself of blame. For example, a military spokesperson cited the soldiers ‘dutifulness’ and how they did not have any ‘intention to kill’ as reasons for their early release. Yet the photo of the ten Rohingya men lined up, kneeling, hands behind their heads, shows clearly that the soldiers had every intention to murder them. Furthermore, both the cases of the freed soldiers and Wirathu demonstrate that despite Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s mantra of rule of law, it is still severely lacking in Myanmar today. Continuing to place faith and hope in the activities of these domestic accountability mechanisms, which have failed the victims and brought upon no justice and change in the behavior of the Myanmar military, will only lead to further deterioration of the conditions on the ground for persecuted religious and ethnic minorities. Moreover, it will lead to the further emboldening the military to simply carry on and continue to persecute and commit violent crimes against religious and ethnic minorities. Given these circumstances, it is vital that Myanmar be urgently referred to the International Criminal Court by the UN Security Council and for the international accountability mechanisms to fill the deep gap that exists in Myanmar today..."
Source/publisher: Progressive Voice
Date of publication: 2019-06-05
Date of entry/update: 2019-06-06
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Title: Myanmar military committing war crimes in Rakhine: Amnesty
Description: "The same units of the Myanmar military that in 2017 were implicated in a brutal crackdown that drove hundreds of thousands of mainly Muslim Rohingya from the country are again committing war crimes as they step up their campaign against ethnic Rakhine rebels, Amnesty International has said. The conflict in western Myanmar's Rakhine state escalated in January after 13 police officers were killed in a co-ordinated attack by the Arakan Army, prompting the civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi to order the armed forces to "crush" the group, which recruits from the largely-Buddhist ethnic Rakhine community. In a new report on Wednesday, Amnesty said its investigations showed war crimes and human rights violations were being committed by soldiers from the Rakhine-based Western Command, which was also implicated in atrocities against the Rohingya in August 2017. Victims also identified soldiers from the Myanmar Army's 22nd and 55th Light Infantry Divisions, units that usually operate in other parts of the country. Rebels clash with Myanmar forces, thousands displaced (2:30) "Less than two years since the world outrage over the mass atrocities committed against the Rohingya population, the Myanmar military is again committing horrific abuses against ethnic groups in Rakhine state," Nicholas Bequelin, regional director for East and Southeast Asia at Amnesty International, said in a statement. "The new operations in Rakhine state show an unrepentant, unreformed and unaccountable military terrorising civilians and committing widespread violations as a deliberate tactic." More than 730,000 Rohingya, a minority ethnic group denied citizenship by Myanmar, were driven into Bangladesh in the bloody crackdown in 2017. A United Nations fact-finding mission has called for the prosecution of top Myanmar generals for crimes against humanity and genocide over the violence..."
Kate Mayberry
Source/publisher: Al Jazeera
Date of publication: 2019-05-29
Date of entry/update: 2019-06-04
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Title: Myanmar: Arrest warrant issued for anti-Muslim monk Wirathu
Description: "A court in Myanmar has issued an arrest warrant against Wirathu, a notorious Buddhist monk whose hate-preaching sermons against the Rohingya and other minority Muslims have stoked religious tensions. The monk, who once reportedly dubbed himself the "Burmese bin Laden", faces up to life imprisonment under the country's sedition law, which prohibits stirring up "hatred", "contempt" or "disaffection" towards the government. Police have so far declined to say why Wirathu has been charged, but the monk recently drew anger from senior officials for a series of speeches in which he attacked Myanmar's de facto civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Wirathu has not yet been arrested and his exact whereabouts are unknown. A police spokesperson did not answer calls from Al Jazeera seeking comment. He is usually based at his monastery in the city of Mandalay, but a judge has told police to bring him before a court in the country's main city of Yangon before June 4, the Myanmar Now news agency reported. Contacted by phone, a man who described himself as a student of Wirathu told Al Jazeera the monk had left Mandalay for Yangon, where he has been summoned to appear before a panel of senior monks on Thursday. The panel is expected to reprimand him for his involvement in "mundane affairs" after a recent speech he gave defending Myanmar's military-drafted constitution and railing against Aung San Suu Kyi's efforts to amend it. READ MORE Myanmar government ups the ante with military over political role During the speech he said military members of parliament, who are guaranteed unelected seats by the constitution, should be worshipped like the Buddha..."
Joshua Carroll
Source/publisher: Al Jazeera
Date of publication: 2019-05-29
Date of entry/update: 2019-06-04
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Title: Life After Conflict: Healing the Environmental Wounds of War | earthrise - (video)
Description: "Life After Conflict: Healing the Environmental Wounds of War: earthrise looks at ways of healing one of the silent and often forgotten casualties of war – the environment. In conflict, one of the silent and forgotten casualties is often the environment. From the chemical contamination of soils with chemicals, and the collapse of water and food supplies, to the habitat damage caused by displacement, war has devastating consequences. Not only man-made infrastructures but also natural ecosystems are destroyed and lives lost. But even amid the most vicious struggles, there are people fighting to protect the world we live in and recover what was lost. "Protection of the environment is a norm. It's something which we do, where are standards in place. Yet, during conflict, it is almost as if anything goes. You can cause whatever damage you like and there is no accountability, there's no redress," says Doug Weir, director, The Conflict and Environment Observatory The Rohingya and the elephants In August 2017, a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing began in Myanmar. The military and armed fighters claimed the lives of more than 6,000 Rohingya in just one month. Fearing death, thousands more fled the country for the forests of Bangladesh. The scale of the exodus was enormous, and today they are still unable to return home. Over 1.2 million refugees are living in the sprawling refugee camps in Bangladesh. When they arrived, they were unaware that the forest in which they took shelter was already occupied - by wild elephants. Shortly after they settled, elephants began to rampage through the camp, killing 13 people in the space of five months. "All the camps used to be forest, they used to be elephant habitat," says Raquib Amin, an IUCN Bangladesh representative. "There is a space we call elephant corridor ... since the camp, [we are] completely blocking that corridor. Elephants cannot pass through the camp ... it is in search of its shelter, its food, its migration path." earthrise travelled to Kutupalong Camp in Bangladesh to find out how the Rohingya are learning to live with their elephant neighbours and how they are saving lives, both human and elephant, in the process. Saving Syria's Seed Bank In Lebanon, ICARDA seed bank, where seeds are saved from a bank in Aleppo, Syria, is helping scientists develop new pest and weather resistant crops. Crop diversity, which is so essential for food security, has declined by three quarters since the 1900s. The world's insurance policy is a network of 1,750 seed banks which safeguard plant biodiversity and can be turned to in times of crisis. But conflict can make even the seed banks themselves vulnerable. "It became impossible to access the gene bank in October 2015 because we were banned from accessing the centre by the armed group controlling the area," says Syrian seed conservationist Ali Shehadeh. "They stole the vehicles, they stole a lot of equipment ... nothing was left in the headquarters except the building and the gene bank." We meet a remarkable team of scientists who have fled the horrors of the Syrian war and are rebuilding the ICARDA seed bank in the heart of the fertile crescent where agriculture began..."
Source/publisher: Al Jazeera
Date of publication: 2019-05-28
Date of entry/update: 2019-05-31
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Title: President’s Office Says It Had No Role in Release of Rohingya Massacre Soldiers
Description: "Seven soldiers jailed by the military for killing 10 Rohingya in Rakhine State in 2017 were released under the military justice system and not by presidential pardon, a spokesman for the Myanmar President’s Office said Friday. The four officers and three soldiers were dismissed from the military and sentenced to 10 years with hard labor at a remote prison in April last year for their participation in the massacre, the military announced at the time. However, they were released in November 2018, after serving less than one year, under a pardon authorized by the military chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing. At a press conference in Naypyitaw, President’s Office spokesperson U Zaw Htay said, “They have been released according to military justice,” when asked by The Irrawaddy whether the Army informed the President’s Office about the release in advance. “It’s not by presidential pardon,” he said. Along with the soldiers, three policemen and six villagers were also arrested. U Zaw Htay said one of the police officers, Police Private Zwe Maung Maung, who received a three-year sentence for his involvement in the incident, was also released, after serving one year and seven months. “He submitted an appeal and was released on May 8, one day after the Reuters journalists were set free,” he said, referring to two local journalists working for the news agency who were arrested for investigating the incident early last year. Both Ko Wa Lone and Ko Kyaw Soe Oo walked free on a presidential pardon early this month after serving 16 months behind bars. However, the spokesperson didn’t mention the fate of the other two policemen and villagers other than to say that “villager U Tun Aye is still serving his five-year prison sentence.” Myanmar military spokesperson Brigadier General Zaw Min Tun told The Irrawaddy on Wednesday that the soldiers were found not to have had any intention to kill, but their actions were simply not in line with procedures while serving in a time of conflict. He added that given the soldiers’ dutifulness during their time in the Army, and in consideration of a petition filed on their behalf by a group of people including monks, the military chief reduced their prison sentence from 10 years to one year with hard labor in accordance with military justice. In Myanmar, the Constitution grants the military chief the final say in questions of military justice, stating that “the decision of the Commander-in-Chief of the Defense Services is final and conclusive.”.."
Source/publisher: The Irrawaddy
Date of publication: 2019-05-31
Date of entry/update: 2019-05-31
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Title: Rohingya crisis a lesson for world
Description: "Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has said the Rohingya crisis is a lesson for other situations of crises in the region and elsewhere in the world to overcome chaos with the power of peace, humanity and development. “We have sought dialogue and consensus over discord, even in the face of extreme provocation and crisis. We are not only responding to a humanitarian call, but we’re also aware about not allowing the crisis to escalate into chaos and regional instability,” she said. The PM was delivering her keynote speech at the 25th International Nikkei Conference on Future of Asia at Imperial Hotel here yesterday with the theme “Seeking a New Global order - Overcoming the Chaos”. Hasina said despite having extreme limitations, Bangladesh offered shelter to over 1.1 million forcibly displaced Rohingyas as a responsible nation. “The future of the world lies in convergence of interests common to humanity. As a member of the global community, Bangladesh will continue to work with all friends and partners to ensure a stable and sustainable world order for our future generations.” The PM shared some of her ideas with the Asian leaders to make a better Asia. “Today’s world is confronted with challenges and conflicts in many ways. We need to pledge to strengthen the world with greater openness, jointly address global challenges, safeguard fairness and justice and inject new impetus to cooperate using innovative ideas and measures.” Economies should take innovative practices surpassing alliances, Hasina said, adding that partnerships need to build on mutual trust and respect, common development and prosperity for a win-win strategy and to the benefit of people. She said Asian countries need to cooperate with each other in the spirit of openness, inclusiveness, equality, sharing benefits and joint contributions. Asia’s future would depend on sustainable and balanced development, improving international order and establishing win-win international relations, the PM observed. Mentioning that human civilisations flourished despite having suffered the horrors of war and the scourges of nature, the premier said she was confident that the daunting challenges confronting human civilisations would ultimately produce a positive outcome through strong, rational and responsible leadership and through partnerships among nations. In this regard, she firmly said the power of humanity and positive forces is bound to prevail. “The global community is looking up to us, the rising Asia, to innovate, aspire, and lead the world towards continued peace and prosperity.” Hasina said despite positive experience, the growing trend of trade protectionism has been seen in recent years. On the other hand, Asia has long been in support of liberalising trade and investment. Forthright, the protectionist move from many countries may eventually lead to a worldwide trade tension. “It’s a simple economics that tariff rise will cause decline in GDP growth.” The PM hoped that the Nikkei Forum would suggest how to strengthen the cooperation between the Asian countries and how to deal with protectionism within multilateral trading regime. Putting emphasis on UN system and multilateralism, she said, “Our emphasis has always been to promote peace and progress that would directly benefit people. In a multi-polar world, we would strive to strengthen the UN system and multilateralism for all countries.” Increasing close interdependence among economies in Asia and beyond would add further wealth to the economies and societies. Cross-border movement of goods and people cause exchange of a wide range of knowledge and experience and ideas, Hasina told the programme. “It is the dynamism of connectivity that forms the cornerstone for peace and prosperity around the world. Infrastructure, free trade and liberal investment give foundation to Asian development.” The premier said the unprecedented levels of wealth and opportunity, rising life expectancy, greater access to education, falling infant mortality and reductions in absolute poverty have been witnessed in recent years. Laying emphasis on facing development challenges collectively, Hasina said, “We may pool together as a group to boost world peace and stability, promote a multi-polar world and protect legitimate rights and interests of developing countries.” Terming private sector the main engine of Bangladesh’s economy, she said her government attaches utmost priority to private entrepreneurship and investments, both domestic and foreign. She said Bangladesh has one of the most liberal foreign investment regimes in South Asia, which includes legal protection of foreign investment, generous tax policy schemes and concessionary duty on import of machinery. “We also offer 100 percent foreign equity, unrestricted and full repatriation of dividend and capital on exit. We enjoy preferential access to most of the leading world markets, including the EU, Canada, and Japan. All these generate significant incentive for global investors, and we’re witnessing growing interest from foreign investors,” she said..."
Minister Sheikh Hasina
Source/publisher: The Daily Star
Date of publication: 2019-05-31
Date of entry/update: 2019-05-31
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Title: UN REFUGEE CHIEF VISITS MYANMAR THIS WEEK
Description: "The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, began his five-day visit to Myanmar this morning. This is the first visit by the head of the UN Refugee Agency to Myanmar since August 2017. Grandi is scheduled to spend the first two days in Myanmar’s Rakhine State where he will visit communities in Sittwe, and the northern townships and will meet with state and district officials. Later in the week, the UN refugee chief is scheduled meet senior Myanmar Government officials in the capital Nay Pyi Taw. This week’s visit to Myanmar comes on the heels of the High Commissioner’s mission to Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh at the end of April. More than 900,000 stateless Rohingya refugees currently live in crowded settlements in Cox’s Bazar, of whom an estimated 741,000 fled from Myanmar since August 2017. In the course of his stay in Myanmar, Grandi will follow up on a range of issues raised by refugees from Myanmar and will discuss Myanmar’s efforts to find comprehensive and durable solutions to the crisis in Rakhine State..."
Source/publisher: Progressive Voice via "The UN Refugee Agency"
Date of publication: 2019-05-20
Date of entry/update: 2019-05-31
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Title: Tokyo stands by Bangladesh over Rohingya repatriation issue
Description: "According to the statement delivered following their talks at the Japanese premier’s office, the two leaders discussed finding a “durable and early solution” to the protracted Rohingya crisis erupted with the displacement of over a million Rohingya populations from Myanmar to Bangladesh. Sheikh Hasina appreciated Japanese realization of the gravity of the crisis as “Prime Minister Abe and I discussed finding a durable and early solution to the humanitarian and political crisis”. “Japan understands that the solution to this crisis lies in the early, safe and dignified return of this displaced people to their homeland Myanmar and it is necessary for Myanmar to create conducive atmosphere in Rakhine State of Myanmar for the return of the displaced people,” she said. Sheikh Hasina thanked the Japanese government for their generous support to Dhaka in handling the crisis, and for their efforts to support early repatriation of the forcibly displaced people to Myanmar. The prime minister said she and Abe reiterated their commitment to take Bangladesh-Japan relations to new heights of cooperation and partnership..."
Source/publisher: The Daily Star
Date of publication: 2019-05-29
Date of entry/update: 2019-05-30
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Title: Rohingya crisis ‘our problem’ too, says SKorea actor Jung
Description: "“The refugee issue is not only their problem, it is our problem,” Jung told a group of reporters during an interview held at the office of the UNHCR in central Seoul. “When I say ‘we,’ it could be taken as a limited meaning, but it is a problem (for all) of humanity and we belong to it.” Jung, who has been a UNHCR honorary ambassador since 2014, visited the Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh from May 19-23. An estimated 910,000 Rohingya refugees have fled Rakhine state in northern Myanmar and now live outside Myanmar. About 55 percent are under the age of 17. The Rohingya are denied citizenship by Myanmar, a predominantly Buddhist country that sees them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. This has led to the world’s fastest-growing refugee crisis. “In other refugee camps, they had hope that they could go back home. But Rohingya refugees had doubts about whether they could go back to the land (where) they feel at home. They are the ones who are in the most devastating and appalling situations,” Jung said. What frustrates Rohingya refugees the most is the lack of access to education for their children, he said. Acknowledging that a political solution is needed to end the ongoing crisis, Jung said the burden should not lie solely on the Bangladeshi government. “Economically developed countries in Asia, such as South Korea, should more proactively perceive (the problem), sympathize and continue to give support,” he said. “We cannot leave Bangladesh, Myanmar and Rohingya Muslims with the burden of finding a solution.” Jung also stressed the role of Koreans and the Korean government. Recalling how South Korea rose from the ashes of the 1950-53 Korean War with the help of the international community, Jung said, “I think we, who are living in the contemporary world, should take more interest in the refugee issue.” He also expressed concerns about the hateful anti-refugee sentiment that exists within Korean society, as well as the government’s proposal to toughen the Refugee Act. “We are giving temporary opportunities for them to stand on their own feet while protecting their dignity because they are people who are in difficulty,” he said. “Toughening the act would be about controlling, alienating and managing refugees, which is far from the purpose of the act.” After all, every refugee is an individual who dreams of the lives all Koreans dream of, he said. As a goodwill ambassador for the UNHCR, Jung has visited refugee camps in Nepal, South Sudan, Lebanon, Iraq, Bangladesh, Djibouti, Malaysia and Bangladesh. His book, “If You Could See What I Have Seen,” based on his five years with the refugee agency, is set to be published next month..."
Source/publisher: The Daily Star
Date of publication: 2019-05-29
Date of entry/update: 2019-05-29
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Title: Rohingya repatriation: UNHCR, UNDP signs extension of MoU with Myanmar
Description: "The MoU was first signed in Naypyiday on June 6 last year, which has been extended for one more year. The MoU provides a framework of cooperation to create improved and resilient livelihoods for all communities living in northern Rakhine state, according to a press release. All the parties – UNHCR, UNDP and Myanmar’s Ministry of Labor, Immigration and Population – have reaffirmed their full commitment to the timely and effective implementation of the MoU, it said. Myanmar and Bangladesh signed a deal on repatriation of the Rohingya in November, three months after some 750,000 Rohingya had fled military crackdown by the Myanmar military. Repatriation was scheduled to start in November last year, but the Rohingyas did not agree, saying the conditions in Myanmar were not conducive. Talking about the extension of the tripartite MoU, Ro Nay San Lwin, coordinator of Free Rohingya Coalition, a worldwide network of Rohingya diaspora, said to The Daily Star that it is regrettable that the UN is cooperating with Myanmar, which is not doing anything to improve the conditions of Rakhine for their return. “UN agencies have not even consulted the Rohingyas, the survivors of genocide,” he told The Daily Star from Germany over phone. There is no guarantee of safety of the Rohingya or their citizenship there. The genocide survivors cannot return to a country under such conditions, he said, demanding that the UN should expose these to the world..."
Source/publisher: The Daily Star
Date of publication: 2019-05-28
Date of entry/update: 2019-05-29
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Title: Find lasting solution to Rohingya crisis
Description: "Planning Minister MA Mannan yesterday urged the international community to find a permanent solution to the Rohingya crisis. He said the recent influx of more than one million Rohingyas from Myanmar was a considerable stress on Bangladesh’s development efforts. “I call upon the international community to come forward in support of these forcibly displaced people and to devise a permanent solution to this problem,” he said. He was addressing a session at the 75th annual conference of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (Escap) in Bangkok, Thailand. The minister said Bangladesh was one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change although its contribution to the global carbon emission was almost zero. He said disasters caused by climate change were creating extreme poverty in the country, posing a threat to people’s empowerment and founding of an equitable society. He said it was also leading to massive migration of rural people to urban areas, posing a challenge to sustainable urbanisation and creating climate refugees within the country. “Therefore, I would appeal to the whole international community through the Escap for collective action without any delay to save the people and the planet. Otherwise, all of our development efforts would be meaningless.” About the country’s growing economy, Mannan said over the last decade, the country has gained commendable success in achieving gender parity in education. Female enrolment rate at the primary school is now 99.4 percent and about 2.7 million girls are receiving stipend at the secondary and higher secondary levels, he added. With a view to bringing quality healthcare services to the doorsteps of the rural people, the country has set up more than 14,000 community clinics across the country. The average life expectancy has increased to 72 years while the infant mortality rate and maternal mortality rate has dropped significantly, according to the minister. Monowar Ahmed, secretary to Economic Relations Division, was also a part of the Bangladesh delegation..."
MA Mannan
Source/publisher: The Daily Star
Date of publication: 2019-05-28
Date of entry/update: 2019-05-28
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Title: Rohingya massacre: Myanmar grants soldiers early release
Description: "The soldiers were sentenced in 2018 to 10 years in prison for the Inn Din village killings, but they "are no longer detained", prison officials say. Reuters, which uncovered the massacre and first reported the early releases, said the men were freed in November. They are the only people to have been convicted for the 2017 crackdown on Rohingya in the western Rakhine State. More than 700,000 people fled the country as a result of the military operation there. On Monday, a spokesperson for the prison department told reporters that the seven soldiers convicted over the Inn Din executions were "no longer detained in our prisons," without giving further details. One of the soldiers confirmed to Reuters that he had been released but declined to comment further, saying: "We were told to shut up." Two fellow inmates told the news agency that the release came in November - less than a year into the 10-year prison term. The journalists who exposed the massacre were sentenced to seven years in prison for their reporting..."
Source/publisher: BBC News
Date of publication: 2019-05-27
Date of entry/update: 2019-05-28
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Title: Myanmar soldiers jailed for Rohingya killings freed after less than a year
Description: "The soldiers were freed in November last year, the two inmates said, meaning they served less than one year of their 10-year prison terms for the killings at Inn Din village. They also served less jail time than two Reuters reporters who uncovered the killings. The journalists, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, spent more than 16 months behind bars on charges of obtaining state secrets. The two were released in an amnesty on May 6. Win Naing, the chief warden at Rakhine's Sittwe Prison, and a senior prison official in the capital, Naypyitaw, confirmed that the convicted soldiers had not been in prison for some months. "Their punishment was reduced by the military," said the senior Naypyitaw official, who declined to be named. Both prison officials declined to provide further details and said they did not know the exact date of the release, which was not announced publicly. Military spokesmen Zaw Min Tun and Tun Tun Nyi declined to comment. The seven soldiers were the only security personnel the military has said it has punished over the 2017 operation in Rakhine, which drove more than 730,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee to Bangladesh. UN investigators said the crackdown was executed with "genocidal intent" and included mass killings, gang rapes and widespread arson. Myanmar denies widespread wrongdoing and officials have pointed to the jailing of the seven soldiers in the Inn Din case as evidence Myanmar security forces do not enjoy impunity. "I would say that we took action against every case we could investigate," the military's commander in chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, told officials from the UN Security Council in April last year, according to an account posted on his personal website. The army chief cited the Inn Din case specifically. "The latest crime we punished was a killing, and ten years’ imprisonment was given to seven perpetrators," he said. "We will not forgive anyone if they commit (a) crime." Reached by phone on Thursday, a man named Zin Paing Soe confirmed that he was one of the seven soldiers and that he was now free, but declined to comment further. "We were told to shut up," he said..."
Source/publisher: The Daily Star
Date of publication: 2019-05-27
Date of entry/update: 2019-05-27
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Title: Strategic support necessary to deal with Rohingya crisis: UNHCR envoy
Description: "Although there was a great support from the Bangladesh government as well the host community, I still see a lack of political solution for the Rohingya refugees," he told UNB in an interview during his second visit to Bangladesh to see the Rohingya situation on the ground. Bangladesh is now hosting over 1.2 million Rohingyas in Cox's Bazar with around 741,000 fleeing Myanmar since August 2017, officials say. Despite living in Myanmar for generations, the Rohingya people lost their citizenship following a change in Myanmar laws in 1982. Talking about his role in helping these vulnerable people, the UNHCR envoy said there are people who do not even get to know about them as the conflicts continue other parts of the world. "There's a need for everyone to know about these problems globally. So, my role is to share the stories to people in Korea and around Asia and the plights of refugees, which I believe, may lead to a solution for them," said Jung who has undertaken extensive awareness and fundraising activities for Rohingyas that he has met in Cox's Bazar twice..."
Source/publisher: The Daily Star
Date of publication: 2019-05-24
Date of entry/update: 2019-05-25
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Title: Longer dry season shrinks water supply for Rohingya refugees to critical levels
Description: "Low rainfall in parts of southeast Bangladesh’s Teknaf peninsula means that UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency and partners are expecting in the next 10-12 days to begin trucking water to more than 140,000 Rohingya refugees living there. With only sporadic rainfall since November, the water table has dropped to the point where water supplies for refugee settlements are now at critical level. Already, two weeks ago, the daily ration of water for refugees was reduced from the normal minimum standard of 20 litres a day per person to 15 litres a day. As always, reducing water availability increases concern over hygiene and health standards and the potential of water borne diseases - something humanitarian agencies fight hard to prevent. Trucking water is expensive, but it is a life-saving measure. We estimate that the cost of transporting water by road to settlements sheltering some 140,000 refugees could be up to $60,000 a month. Current weather models are not forecasting rain any time soon. The geography of refugee settlements in southern Teknaf means that groundwater is not available through boreholes. All water must be preserved by capturing rain water in small reservoirs – something that is now depleted. Water shortages in this part of Bangladesh occur during the summer period and affect refugees and the local population alike. This year the situation is being compounded by the El Niño phenomenon – an abnormal weather pattern that affects the global climate and disrupts normal weather patterns, which as a result can lead to intense storms in some places and droughts in others. During the summer, temperatures in this part of Bangladesh can reach 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in the settlements. With the monsoon due to arrive in June, UNHCR is expanding efforts to build better facilities to capture and preserve rain water. Hundreds of refugees are currently being involved in a project run by the World Food Programme (WFP) with humanitarian agency ADRA and supported by UNHCR to create a new local reservoir to capture monsoon rain in Teknaf and preserve it throughout the year. This project should improve the situation temporarily..."
Stephen Pattison, Joseph Tripura, Andrej Mahecic
Source/publisher: The UN Refugee Agency
Date of publication: 2019-05-24
Date of entry/update: 2019-05-24
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Title: UAE launches major campaign to assist Rohingya refugees
Description: "The UAE has launched a major campaign to help support hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees forced to flee Myanmar. The nationwide drive aims to assist those from the minority Muslim group who now find themselves in camps in India, Bangladesh and elsewhere. Under the initiative, organisers hope to provide education, food, health services, sanitation and shelter for some of the more than 1.2 million people. The figure includes an estimated 720,000 children, 240,000 women, and 48,000 elderly. Announcing the campaign on Thursday, Dr Mohammed Ateeq Al Falahi, Secretary-General of the Emirates Red Crescent, highlighted the escalating predicament faced by many of the Rohingya. "The UAE has always been proactive in its solidarity with Rohingya refugees, especially children and women, and has worked from the very first moment to support them," he said. "There is no doubt that the consequences of the Rohingya crisis have caused a difficult reality for refugees. “We are now in a new phase of the UAE's humanitarian response to them. This is a continuation of the previous stages and in keeping with the challenges posed by the worsening refugee situation and the escalating crisis.” Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled Myanmar in 2017 in the midst of a brutal campaign of violence described by the UN as ethnic cleansing and possible genocide. Many were from Rakhine state in the west of the country, where a military-led crackdown which claimed to be targeting militants resulted in villages razed and thousands killed. The government of Myanmar, a predominantly Buddhist country, has refused to give the Rohingya citizenship, claiming they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh..."
Mohammad Ponir Hossain
Source/publisher: The National
Date of publication: 2019-05-23
Date of entry/update: 2019-05-24
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Title: Rohingya Man, 8-Year-Old Son Killed in Blast in Northern Rakhine
Description: "An explosion killed a Rohingya boy and his father and severely wounded another adult in northern Rakhine State’s Kyauktaw Township on Tuesday, according to a village official. The victims were identified as Mohamad Shofi, 38, his son Husson, 8, and Mohammad Shazam, an adult of unknown age, according to Ah Lel Kyun village administrative official U Win Hla Tun. Mohammad Shazam was transported to Sittwe Hospital for medical treatment this morning, U Win Hla Tun said. The victims were from Ah Lel Kyun, a village 8 km north of downtown Kyauktaw, said U Win Hla Tun. Ah Lel Kyun is a mixed community, with Buddhist and Muslim settlements within half a mile of one another, he said. U Win Hla Tun said there had been armed conflict between the Arakan Army (AA) and the Myanmar military (or Tatmadaw) on Monday but that the situation had returned to normal. Then, unexpectedly, there was an explosion near the village on Tuesday morning. He could not clearly determine the nature of the blast that occurred near Mohamad Shofi’s home..."
Moe Myint
Source/publisher: The Irrawaddy
Date of publication: 2019-05-22
Date of entry/update: 2019-05-23
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Title: Civilians Suffer Landmine Injuries in N. Rakhine
Description: "Two civilians were injured after they stepped on a mine on Tuesday in Rakhine State’s Kyauktaw Township. Two locals, aged 25 and 27, from the village of Nga Pyaw Chaung in Kyauktaw suffered injuries to their legs, arms and shoulders and are receiving medical treatment at the local hospital in Kyauktaw, Ko Nyi Pu, a member of the Kyauktaw-based social organization Phyu Sin Meitta told The Irrawaddy. “They got serious injuries on their legs, but are not in a critical condition. We have arranged to send them to Sittwe Hospital if necessary,” said Ko Nyi Pu. The two men, together with some 30 other residents of the village went to a mountain to the west of the village to collect timber to be used for building houses. The pair stepped on a mine on their way back home, said Ko Maung Maung Than who was part of the group collecting timber. “The logs are quite big so we brought over 30 people to carry them. We used the same route to go to the mountain, but nothing happened. The two stepped on the mine and the explosion occurred as the whole group came down the mountain carrying logs,” Ko Maung Maung Thein told The Irrawaddy. Locals said that the Myanmar military, or Tatmadaw, and the Arakan Army (AA) had clashed in the same area some two months ago..."
Min Aung Khine
Source/publisher: The Irrawaddy
Date of publication: 2018-05-22
Date of entry/update: 2019-05-22
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Title: Ramadan, Iftar evoke feelings of nostalgia among Rohingyas
Description: "Ramadan is the month when Muslims try to get closer to each other with greater love and affection with the spirit of the holy month. But the Rohingya Muslims living in Cox's Bazar camps find it painful when they get together for having iftar meal as their tragic memories constantly haunt them. "We used to take Iftar and offer prayers together with our family members and relatives before August 25, 2017. Now, we've got detached from our homeland and beloved ones. Having Iftar with them is merely a memory now," recalls Rafiq Alam, a Rohingya now living at Balukhali Moynaghona camp No-11. Visiting 32 Rohingya camps in Ukhiya and Teknaf, the UNB correspondent found no shortage of Iftar items there but a sense of isolation and sadness was there among the Rohingya people. Rohingya Lalu Mia, a resident of Balu camp, said, "We had simply water for Iftar during Ramadan last year. Now, there's no scarcity of Iftar meal, but a feeling of sadness grips us as we couldn't meet our relatives for the last two years after being displaced from our homeland in Maungdaw under Rakhine State." Some female Muslim Rohingyas like Yasmin, 21, of Naikhong area, Julekha, 25, and Mayesha of Mijjiripara also shared their own tragic stories..."
Source/publisher: The Daily Star
Date of publication: 2019-05-21
Date of entry/update: 2019-05-21
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Title: Rohingya Crisis: Amir remembers when he was a citizen - video
Description: "Amir is 68, and a refugee living in Bangladesh. He fled Myanmar in 2017 but remembers when he had citizenship in Myanmar. To this date, he still has the papers that document his previous status..."
Source/publisher: The UN Refugee Agency
Date of publication: 2019-05-06
Date of entry/update: 2019-05-21
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Title: Turkey pledges support to end Rohingya crisis
Description: "Turkey is committed to working with Bangladesh in regional and international levels to bring an end to the Rohingya crisis that has been affecting Bangladesh in socio-economic, environmental and even diplomatic fronts. Turkish Member of Parliament Ravza Kavakci in a briefing session reiterated the steadfast commitment and firm determination of Turkish government in this regard. He was speaking at the session “Bangladesh-Turkey: Solidarity for Humanity” organised by Bangladesh Consulate in Istanbul on Saturday. Bangladesh Foreign Secretary Shahidul Haque presented the latest situation of the Rohingya crisis, which has exacerbated mostly since the influx of some 750,000 Rohingyas from August 2017 following military crackdown in Myanmar’s Rakhine state..."
Source/publisher: The Daily Star
Date of publication: 2019-05-19
Date of entry/update: 2019-05-20
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Title: 62 Rohingyas rescued in Cox’s Bazar, 5 ‘traffickers’ held
Description: "Informed by locals, police went to Karimdad Mia’s jetty in Ujantiya area of the upazila around 1:30am and rescued the Rohingyas, who had gathered there to board a Malaysia-bound engine boat, said Mohammad Iqbal Hossain, additional superintendent of Cox’s Bazar police. Some Rohingyas and the crew of the boat managed to escape, the official said, adding that the rescued Rohingyas fled from the refugee camp in Kutupalong of Cox’s Bazar. They were allured of opportunity to be sent to Malaysia by traffickers, Iqbal Hossain also said. Police are trying to identify the human traffickers and their middlemen operating in the area, he added. In St Martin’s Island, a patrol team of Coast Guard Bangladesh intercepted a boat carrying Rohingya refugees in Dakkhin Beach area last night, according to a press release of the Bangladesh Coast Guard’s Detective Branch. They rescued 17 Rohingya refugees who were being trafficked to Malaysia and also arrested five traffickers, the press release added..."
Source/publisher: The Daily Star
Date of publication: 2019-05-18
Date of entry/update: 2019-05-18
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Title: Building a Better Future for Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh
Description: "Eighteen months on from the mass expulsion of 740,000 Rohingya from Myanmar to Bangladesh, no sustainable solution for the refugees is in sight. Repatriation to Myanmar should remain the long-term goal – not only to relieve the huge burden on Bangladesh but also because that is the strong preference of the refugees themselves. But the unfortunate reality is that Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh will be unable to return home to Myanmar for the foreseeable future. Systems are now largely in place to provide for their essential humanitarian needs in the sprawling refugee camps. It is now time to move beyond the emergency phase of managing this crisis. Shifting focus in this way requires Bangladesh to ease its restrictions on longer-term assistance. Specifically: The Bangladesh government should lift its ban on the provision of formal education in the camps; local and international organisations are ready to provide such education. It should also improve law and order in the camps, where militants and gangs increasingly operate with impunity and are consolidating control to the detriment of non-violent political voices and leaders. This requires instituting a regular and effective Bangladeshi police presence in the camps and investigating crimes and bringing perpetrators to justice. For their part, donors should help Bangladesh not only to meet the refugees’ immediate humanitarian needs but also to cover the costs of measures that improve their lives and prospects for the future..."
Source/publisher: International Crisis Group (ICG)
Date of publication: 2019-04-25
Date of entry/update: 2019-05-18
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Title: Over 250,000 Rohingya refugees get identity documents, for many a first
Description: "Over a quarter of a million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar have now been jointly registered and provided with identity cards by the Bangladesh authorities and UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. Rohingya refugees sheltering in Bangladesh are stateless. Despite living in Myanmar for generations, the Rohingya lost their citizenship following a change in Myanmar laws in 1982. Today, more than 900,000 Rohingya refugees are in crowded settlements in Cox’s Bazar, 741,000 of these being people who have fled from Myanmar since August 2017. The registration exercise, which began in June 2018, is about safeguarding the right of Rohingya refugees to be able to return home voluntarily to Myanmar in future. So far, the Government and UNHCR have registered 270,348 refugees (59,842 families) in the settlements in Cox’s Bazar district. Each day, over 4,000 refugees are registered at six different locations, where more than 450 staff are working long hours with the goal of completing the process by late 2019. Comprehensive registration is important for improving the accuracy of data on refugees in Bangladesh. It provides national authorities and humanitarian organizations with a better understanding of the population and their needs. Data will facilitate the planning of programmes and the targeting of assistance to where it is needed most, particularly for people in acute need, such as women and children heading families and people with disabilities..."
Joseph Tripura, Stephen Pattison, Caroline Gluck, Andrej Mahecic
Source/publisher: The UN Refugee Agency
Date of publication: 2019-05-17
Date of entry/update: 2019-05-18
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Title: Asian allies boost Myanmar’s pariah military
Description: "Three years after Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) was elected to power, temporarily ending the nation’s decades-long pariah status under military rule, Naypyidaw is already back in the world’s bad graces. But that hasn’t stopped Asian governments from pragmatically supporting Suu Kyi’s controversial regime, now accused of genocide by the UN and others for its violent expulsion of over 700,000 Rohingya, in the form of strengthened defense ties. As de facto leader, Suu Kyi and her government has failed to stop a fresh spate of violence instigated by its Buddhist majority population on the Rohingya, a predominantly Muslim group. Its inaction on the humanitarian issue has resulted in economic sanctions from the West, with the United States, European Union and Canada imposing arms embargoes and penalties on Myanmar military officials. Its inaction on the humanitarian issue has resulted in economic sanctions from the West, with the United States, European Union and Canada imposing arms embargoes and penalties on Myanmar military officials. In contrast, Asia has ramped up security relations with the NLD administration and autonomous military, which controls the powerful defense, home and border affairs ministries..."
NYSHKA CHANDRAN
Source/publisher: Asia Times
Date of publication: 2019-05-17
Date of entry/update: 2019-05-17
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Title: UN mission urges cutting off financial ties with Myanmar army
Description: "A United Nations fact-finding mission has urged cutting off all business with Myanmar's military as part of efforts to hold the army accountable for human rights abuses. In a statement on Tuesday, the UN Human Rights Council said there had been no progress towards resolving the crisis over Myanmar's mostly-Muslim Rohingya minority, more than one million of whom have fled military "clearance operations" in the northwest Rakhine region. "The situation is at a total standstill," said Marzuki Darusman, chairman of the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar. Reporting Myanmar's Rohingya story (9:53) Myanmar authorities have razed deserted Rohingya villages and those remaining in the country live in displacement camps in fear of further military reprisals. "Due to the gravity of the past and continuing violations, attention must be given to the political, economic and financial ties of the Myanmar military - to identify who and what should be targeted so we can cut off the money supply as a means of increasing the pressure and reducing the violence," Christopher Sidoti, a member of the mission, said in the statement. The mission found that the military committed atrocities against many ethnic groups living within Myanmar. It also faulted armed ethnic groups for committing human rights abuses. Myanmar denies allegations of human rights violations, saying its security forces have not targeted civilians and have taken action only in response to attacks by Rohingya fighters. UN officials and others have likened the actions to ethnic cleansing, or even genocide. The fact-finding mission is to hand its findings to a new group of the Human Rights Council, the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, in September. That organisation was set up to handle criminal prosecution of violations of international law. The crisis in Rakhine has soured Myanmar's relations with the United States, which had rolled back economic sanctions over the past decade to support political change in the country as it transitioned towards democracy. The US Treasury has imposed sanctions on Myanmar security forces and Washington has barred Myanmar military officials involved in the Rakhine operations from US assistance. Britain has also cut some support and the UN, as well as independent rights advocates, want governments to do more to hold the military accountable..."
Jorge Silva
Source/publisher: Al Jazeera
Date of publication: 2019-05-14
Date of entry/update: 2019-05-16
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Title: Bangladesh police rescue dozens of Rohingya being trafficked to Malaysia
Description: "Bangladeshi police prevented dozens of Rohingya Muslims, most of them women, about to be trafficked to Malaysia by boat, authorities said today. Traffickers had picked up at least 69 Rohingya from refugee camps in the Cox's Bazar district, promising them work in Malaysia where many Rohingya already live, police said. Scores of Rohingya Muslims have boarded boats in recent months to try to reach Malaysia, part of what authorities fear could be a new wave of people smuggling by sea after a 2015 crackdown on trafficking. An estimated 25,000 Rohingya crossed the Andaman Sea for Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia in 2015, many drowning in unsafe and overloaded boats..."
Source/publisher: The Daily Star
Date of publication: 2019-05-14
Date of entry/update: 2019-05-15
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Title: Forget pardons, press freedom requires real reforms
Description: "Myanmar’s president released more than 6,000 prisoners on Tuesday, including two Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists imprisoned for reporting on a military crackdown on the Rohingya Muslim minority in Rakhine state. Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, who work for the Reuters news organization, were arrested in 2017 and, after a corrupt trial engineered by the military, sentenced to seven years in prison. While the presidential pardon is welcome, there are still a number of serious, ongoing issues for freedom of expression and democracy in Myanmar. The influential military and its supporters in the government continue to work against press freedom in particular, waging what a UN human rights report referred to last year as a “political campaign against independent journalism.”..."
KYLE SPRINGER
Source/publisher: Asia Times
Date of publication: 2019-05-12
Date of entry/update: 2019-05-13
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Title: Reporting Myanmar's Rohingya story | The Listening Post (Feature) - (video)
Description: "Vox pop - or Vox populi is Latin for "voice of the people" and in journalism it means interviewing people to get a sense of what they think on the ground. Vox pops are often buried in the middle of a news piece among the opinions from politicians and "experts" and its subjects are frequently not named. Our feature this week begins with vox pops, and they are of Rohingya refugees. Nurul Mustafa, Bosir Ahmed and Mohamed Jubair all fled to Bangladesh in 2017 with their families and have been watching one outlet to get their news: Rohingya Vision. As Bosir Ahmed says, "Rohingya Vision is very useful for us. It means we can share our news and tell the story of our suffering to the world." Since 2017, almost three-quarters of a million Rohingya Muslims have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh. For most of us, these people are invisible because Myanmar's government has done a good job of cracking down on information. But there are always pockets of resistance. Rohingya Vision TV has been reporting the story from the inside. It is run by exiled Rohingya and it relies on undercover reporters to get information out. The stories they tell contest state narratives keen to silence them - as well as the work of media outlets in Myanmar that have closed ranks with the authorities. This piece on Myanmar was made by the Listening Post's Johanna Hoes. We are re-airing it on the week that two Reuters reporters, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, were released from jail after more than 500 days behind bars. The men had been jailed for their investigation into the killing of 10 Rohingya Muslims by Myanmar security forces. If the story is hard to tell by journalists with an international news organisation as their protective seal, imagine what it is like for those reporting with less backup..."
Aye Aye Win, Mark Farmaner
Source/publisher: Al Jazeera
Date of publication: 2019-05-11
Date of entry/update: 2019-05-13
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Title: The Rohingya Crisis in 90 Seconds - (video)
Description: "The humanitarian crisis caused by escalating violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine State is causing suffering on a catastrophic scale. As of 27 September, over 500,000 Rohingya refugees had fled across the border from Myanmar to Bangladesh since 25 August. Thousands more reportedly remain stranded and in peril in Myanmar without the means to cross the border into Bangladesh. The United Nations and our partners are working closely with the Government of Bangladesh to scale up and coordinate the humanitarian response so as to ensure that refugees are protected in line with international standards, and to provide desperately needed support including food, shelter, health care and water..."
Source/publisher: United Nations
Date of publication: 2017-10-16
Date of entry/update: 2019-05-13
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Title: Good News, but Not the News We Need
Description: "The release of two reporters—Ko Wa Lone and Ko Kyaw Soe Oo—delighted journalists in Myanmar and around the world. And while it was certainly good news for the reporters personally, I don’t see it as great news for the country’s media. One reason is that the pair were released thanks to the intervention of the civilian government, but they should never have been arrested, as they were entrapped by the police. Their release offers no assurances that journalists will not face similar set-ups, arrests and charges in the future at the hands of security forces. Their release was a rescue by the government, making what use it can of its limited presidential power. When I heard the news on the way to The Irrawaddy office on Tuesday morning, I was overjoyed—but not surprised. Since the two Reuters journalists were sentenced in September 2018, I had been expecting that they would be released sometime around the Myanmar New Year’s Day in mid-April. On many occasions since then—at meetings with diplomats, and my foreign and local friends—I was asked if and when they would be freed, after they were sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment for their reporting on the killing of 10 Rohingya Muslims by the Army in Rakhine State in 2017. My consistent answer was: “They are likely to be freed in January or April [2019].” Specifically, I said, their release could come on or around Jan. 4—Myanmar’s Independence Day—or in mid-April for the traditional New Year, when the Thingyan water festival is held. During those times, the government tends to release prisoners to mark auspicious moments for the country..."
Kyaw Zwa Moe
Source/publisher: The Irrawaddy
Date of publication: 2019-05-10
Date of entry/update: 2019-05-12
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Title: Rohingya repatriation: Dhaka pins hope on Asean involvement for progress
Description: "Bangladesh has been trying to get the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), a bloc of 10 nations that includes Myanmar, involved in the process of Rohingya repatriation, which was supposed to begin more than 15 months ago as per an agreement between Bangladesh and Myanmar. Dhaka hopes that Asean will be involved as a civilian monitoring entity in the repatriation process, to boost confidence among the brutally-oppressed Rohingyas – currently living in refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar – to safely return to Rakhine. Recently, Bangladesh has been pitching the idea – wherever possible – of involving the bloc with the repatriation process. On May 3, during the fourth meeting of Bangladesh-Myanmar joint working group (JWG) in Naypyidaw, Dhaka highlighted the need for allowing greater engagement of Asean in improving ground situation as well as raise confidence among the Rohingyas. Senior government officials told Dhaka Tribune that Myanmar is always reluctant to involve the United Nations or any other multinational entities in the repatriation process. However, Naypyidaw seems to appear “a bit soft” regarding getting the southeast Asian bloc involved, due to its membership and trust in most of the members in the organization, they added. Of the Asean members, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore are Buddhist-majority countries, while Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei are predominantly Muslim nations, and the Philippines has an overwhelming Christian majority. Keeping all the relevant aspects in mind, Bangladesh is “deeply engaged” with Asean to convince it to be a part of the Rohingya repatriation process to ensure it is sustainable, which is “difficult, but doable,” the officials said..."
Humayun Kabir Bhuiyan
Source/publisher: Dhaka Tribune
Date of publication: 2019-05-09
Date of entry/update: 2019-05-11
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Title: Study: 32% Rohingya children chronically undernourished, 13% acutely
Description: "More than half of over 700,000 Rohingyas who have fled to Bangladesh since August 25, 2017 are children A new research has revealed that about 32% of Rohingya children, aged between six and 59 months, who arrived in Bangladesh after August 2017 are chronically undernourished, while another 13% are acutely undernourished. The study also found that 36% of Rohingya children in the same age group who took refuge in different Cox’s Bazar refugee camps before August 2017 are chronically undernourished, while another 12% are acutely undernourished. The report was launched at a workshop on forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals in Bangladesh, organized by Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), at a Dhaka hotel on Thursday. BIDS conducted the study jointly with the International Food Policy Research Institution (IFPRI) last October. The report was presented by researchers Mohammad Younus and Binayak Sen of BIDS, and Paul Dorosh of IFPRI. Rohingya children’s nutritional status improved between 2017 and 2018, but their undernourishment remains unacceptably high due to poor maternal nutrition and hygiene conditions in the camps, the report revealed. Speaking at the programme as the chief guest, Planning Minister Abdul Mannan said although the Bangladesh government’s performance in most cases is criticized, its role in tackling the Rohingyas has been largely commended in the international arena. “The Rohingyas are actually not in good condition,” said the minister..."
Md Saidun Nabi
Source/publisher: Dhaka Tribune
Date of publication: 2019-05-09
Date of entry/update: 2019-05-11
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Title: ROHINGYA ACTION IRELAND: STATEMENT ON THE RELEASE OF REUTERS JOURNALISTS
Description: "Rohingya Action Ireland welcomes the release of Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo who were jailed for reporting on the massacre and other devastating human rights abuses directed at the Rohingya in Myanmar. We hope the release marks in some way a recognition of the long-standing record of Human Rights Abuses at the hands of Myanmar Military. There is evidence and proof, verified by international agencies, including the UN that Myanmar security forces are responsible for genocide, arson, enforced disappearances, extortion, arbitrarily imprisonment, severe restrictions on movement, and lack of food, education and health care. There are also verifiable reports of sexual violence being committed by the armed forces in ethnic minorities regions. The release of the Reuters reporters is a positive move. However, there are still thousands of Rohingya civilians arbitrarily detained during the campagins of genocide. They are denied legal representation, justice and are separated from their loved ones. There continuous to be severe restrictions on the Freedom of the Press and intimidation of journalists from reporting on the human rights abuses being committed by the military. We must continue to call the Myanmar military to account for their ongoing crimes against humanity..."
Source/publisher: Progressive Voice via "Rohingya Action Ireland"
Date of publication: 2019-05-08
Date of entry/update: 2019-05-10
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Title: Arakan Army chief cries out in Myanmar
Description: "Myanmar’s upstart Arakan Army (AA) has intensified its insurgent operations in recent months, opening a new front of instability in the nation’s long-running ethnic civil wars. The armed conflict has compounded volatility in Rakhine state, from where over 700,000 Muslim Rohingya have been expelled in government “clearance operations” beginning in 2017 the United Nations and others suggest may have had “genocidal intent.” In January, over 300 AA troops raided four border posts in northern Rakhine state, underscoring the 10,000-strong armed group’s rising capabilities since its formation in 2009, with support among the state’s ethnic Rakhine Buddhist majority. The Myanmar government has doubled down in its tit-for-tat reprisals, classifying the group as a “terrorist organization” and threatening reporters who cover the AA’s side of the surging conflict with unlawful association, an anti-state criminal offense. Asia Times spoke to the AA’s leader and founder General Tun Myat Naing in mid-April in Pangsang at the 30th anniversary celebrations of the United Wa State Army, another armed group which enjoys de facto statehood within Myanmar. In a wide-ranging interview, Tun Myat Naing spoke to his ambition of achieving autonomy for ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and what he and his fighters are willing to do to achieve it. Excerpts follow..."
Source/publisher: Asia Times
Date of publication: 2019-04-30
Date of entry/update: 2019-05-05
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Title: EU extends ban on arms sales to Myanmar over Rohingya crisis
Description: "The measures, which include an embargo on weapons and other equipment that could be used for repression, will stay in place until at least April 30, 2020. "The sanctions include an embargo on arms and equipment that can be used for internal repression, an export ban on dual-use goods for use by the military and border guard police, and export restrictions on equipment for monitoring communications that might be used for internal repression," the EU said in a statement. About 14 top military and border officials are under individual EU sanctions - barring them from travelling to or through the European bloc and freezing any assets they hold in Europe - over alleged human rights violations, including killings and sexual violence. It also recalled that it had last adopted conclusions on Myanmar in December 2018 and called on the government of Myanmar to take "meaningful action" without further delay and to make progress in all areas of concern set out in the council's previous conclusions in February 2018. The EU also refuses to cooperate with, or provide training to, the Myanmar military. The Rohingya, described by the United Nations as the world's most persecuted people, have faced heightened fears of attack since dozens were killed in communal violence in 2012..."
Source/publisher: Al Jazeera
Date of publication: 2019-04-30
Date of entry/update: 2019-05-02
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Title: Rohingya crisis: Expert suggests Bangladesh follow Indira Gandhi’s way to deal with Myanmar
Description: "Prof Imtiaz Ahmed, who is also the director of the Center for Genocide Studies in Dhaka University, says Bangladesh needs to change the “body language” when it deals with Myanmar on the Rohingya refugee issue. “It would be easier to do it now than at any time before. We have had the election. We (the government) have a five-year mandate. So I think the government should be in a position….the body language ought to change,” he said, speaking at a seminar in Dhaka on Sunday. The Diplomatic Correspondents Association, Bangladesh (DCAB) organised the seminar titled ‘Rohingya crisis: International Role for Tangible Solutions in Rakhine’ with its president Raheed Ejaz in chair. State Minister for Foreign Affairs Md Shahriar Alam was present as chief guest while UNHCR Representative in Bangladesh Steven Corliss spoke as a panelist. DCAB General Secretary Nurul Islam Hasib made welcome remarks. Foreign Secretary M Shahidul Haque, secretaries to the foreign ministry Md Khurshed Alam, Kamrul Ahsan, Mahbub Uz Zaman, and Khalilur Rahman were also present. Prof Imtiaz said this body language change is “very important” in diplomacy. “The body language must change with Myanmar when we are negotiating. They are the ones who committed genocide, not us,” he said. “Look at the body language of Indira Gandhi way back in 1971”. Gandhi was a staunch supporter of Bangladesh against Pakistan’s genocide in 1971. “I can give examples of an extraordinary number of people that I know back in India and back in 1971 and what was their body language. “That body language ought to change particularly given the fact that this regime or part of the members was responsible for committing genocide,” he said, urging media to “keep a constant gaze” on Myanmar..."
Source/publisher: bdnews24.com
Date of publication: 2019-04-28
Date of entry/update: 2019-04-30
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Title: 'Do not forget the Rohingya': UN urges support for refugees
Description: "Top United Nations officials have urged the international community not to forget the plight of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and called for global support to ensure their safe and voluntary return to Myanmar. Speaking to reporters following a visit to refugee camps in Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar on Friday, Mark Lowcock, the UU under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said the body was seeking to raise nearly a billion dollars to help the Rohingya refugees and their host community. More than 700,000 members of the persecuted minority fled Myanmar following a brutal military crackdown in response to attacks by a Rohingya armed group. More than 1.2 million now live in overcrowded and squalid refugee camps in southeastern Bangladesh. Lowcock said the "great exodus" of Rohingya refugees arriving at Cox's Bazar "caused all sorts of issues"...."
Source/publisher: Al Jazeera
Date of publication: 2019-04-27
Date of entry/update: 2019-04-28
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Title: Myanmar Rohingya: What you need to know about the crisis
Description: "Risking death by sea or on foot, nearly 700,000 have fled the destruction of their homes and persecution in the northern Rakhine province of Myanmar (Burma) for neighbouring Bangladesh since August 2017. The United Nations described the military offensive in Rakhine, which provoked the exodus, as a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing". Myanmar's military says it is fighting Rohingya militants and denies targeting civilians. The Rohingya, who numbered around one million in Myanmar at the start of 2017, are one of the many ethnic minorities in the country. Rohingya Muslims represent the largest percentage of Muslims in Myanmar, with the majority living in Rakhine state. They have their own language and culture and say they are descendants of Arab traders and other groups who have been in the region for generations. But the government of Myanmar, a predominantly Buddhist country, denies the Rohingya citizenship and even excluded them from the 2014 census, refusing to recognise them as a people..."
Source/publisher: BBC News
Date of publication: 2019-04-24
Date of entry/update: 2019-04-25
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Title: Play your role
Description: ''Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday urged the United Nations to play a role in sending back over one million Rohingyas from Bangladesh to their homeland Myanmar. They need to go back to their homeland and the UN could help Bangladesh return them, she told three top UN officials at her Sangsad Bhaban office, reports UNB. After the meeting, PM’s Press Secretary Ihsanul Karim briefed reporters. The UN officials are in Bangladesh on a three-day joint visit to highlight the need for support for the humanitarian assistance to over one million Rohingyas living in Cox’s Bazar. The officials are UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Filippo Grandi, Director General of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) Antonio Vitorino and UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock. She mentioned that over one million Rohingyas are a big burden for Bangladesh. “How long will it continue?” she said. The PM said the local residents of Cox’s Bazar are suffering due to the influx of Rohingyas. “But still they’re listening to me, they’re extending their cooperation to the government. Their cultivable lands are being destroyed, even though Rohingyas have been given shelter destroying the forests.” The UN officials reaffirmed UN’s commitment to continue support and cooperation particularly for the education and other basic needs of the Rohingya children...''
Source/publisher: The Daily Star
Date of publication: 2019-04-25
Date of entry/update: 2019-04-25
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Title: Rohingya crisis: 3 top UN officials arrive Wednesday
Description: "With no progress in sight in regards to the protracted Rohingya crisis, Bangladesh is going to receive yet another high-profile group of dignitaries from the United Nations (UN), which, according to many, has failed hundreds of thousands of persecuted people from Myanmar's Rakhine State. UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Filippo Grandi, Director General of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) António Vitorino and UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock will arrive in Dhaka on Wednesday on a three-day visit to Bangladesh. The objective of the joint visit is "to highlight the ongoing need for support for the humanitarian needs of almost a million Rohingya refugees," a UNHCR press release said on Monday. Speaking to the Dhaka Tribune, government officials concerned did not appear to be optimistic about any qualitative changes to the ongoing crisis due to this kind of high-profile visit. The country witnessed many visits similar to this, but the situation remains as it was in the beginning of the latest crisis in August, 2017, they said. All the UN needs to do is to put pressure on Myanmar to take their people back, and that is something the global body is not doing or unable to do, they added...''
Source/publisher: Dhaka Tribune
Date of publication: 2019-04-22
Date of entry/update: 2019-04-25
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Title: Rohingya crisis: Brunei Sultan for ‘just and permanent solution’ Tribune Desk
Description: "Brunei Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah has put emphasis on “just and permanent solution” to the Rohingya crisis during a bilateral meeting with Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. “We should make all sorts of efforts so that the Rohingyas can return,” Foreign Secretary Md Shahidul Haque quoted the Sultan as saying, while briefing reporters after the talks on Monday morning, reports BSS. The talks were held at Baitul Mesyuarah of the Istana Nurul Iman, the official residence of the Sultan, in Brunei. During the meeting, Shahidul said, the prime minister sought Asean’s major involvement on the Rohingya issue. She also sought the Sultan’s cooperation in this regard, he said. The foreign secretary said Sheikh Hasina briefed the Brunei Sultan about her government’s steps for developing Bhashan Char island for the temporary shelter of the Rohingyas forcibly displaced from Myanmar. About the Asean, the Sultan assured that Brunei will continue to help to strengthen the cooperation between Bangladesh and the regional forum. Earlier, the prime minister had a general audience with the Sultan and the Royal family at Cheradi Laila Kenchana at the Istana Nurul Iman. Sheikh Hasina is now in Brunei on a three-day official visit at the invitation of the Sultan..."
Tribune Desk
Source/publisher: Dhaka Tribune
Date of publication: 2019-04-22
Date of entry/update: 2019-04-25
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Title: Rohingya crisis: Host community furious over badly affected livelihood
Description: "The compassion of most of the locals in Ukhiya and Teknaf upazilas appear to have reached its limit, as many say, their lives were badly affected due to the lengthy stay of over 1.1 million persecuted Rohingya refugees, from neighbouring Rakhine state of Myanmar. Their compassion, which was exemplary at the beginning of the exodus in late August of 2017, now seems to have turned into fury, which is occasionally expressed by the host community in the form of processions and human chains. During visits to some parts the two upazilas, between Thursday and Saturday, the Dhaka Tribune came across quite a few people who expressed their fury, not only against the Rohingyas but also against the government, for what they called a “great mess.” Talking to this correspondent, the people, without any exception, said they want the government either to send the Rohingyas back to Rakhine or spread them across the country..."
Humayun Kabir Bhuiyan
Source/publisher: Dhaka Tribune
Date of publication: 2019-03-31
Date of entry/update: 2019-04-25
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Title: Rohingya repatriation: Stalemate continues, no breakthrough in sight
Description: "Nearly twenty months into the latest exodus of Rohingyas to Cox’s Bazar from Rakhine, there appears to be no sign of a breakthrough in the repatriation of the persecuted people to their homes. An agreement on repatriation was signed by the governments of Bangladesh and Myanmar more than sixteen months ago, but there has been no further progress.The stalemate in regards to repatriation has made both the Bangladesh government and Rohingya refugees equally frustrated. On August 25, 2017, Myanmar security forces, aided by local Buddhist mobs and people from different ethnic groups, launched a brutal crackdown on the Rohingyas, forcing hundreds of thousands to cross into Cox’s Bazar. Since the crackdown, which many including the United Nations say amounts to genocide, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity, more than 730,000 Rohingyas took shelter in Bangladesh’s coastal district of Cox’s Bazar. This figure is in addition to about 3-4 four million Rohingyas who have long been living in Bangladesh, causing a number of socioeconomic problems. High profile delegations from Myanmar and Bangladesh have held several meetings with each other in both countries since the crackdown began, and a repatriation agreement was signed in Naypyidaw on March 23. According to the deal, repatriation should have begun within two months of the signing of the instrument. Furthermore, the deal calls on Myanmar to take all necessary measures to ensure a favourable environment for the safe, secure and dignified return of the Rohingyas, but the country has failed to do so despite making repeated pledges..."
Humayun Kabir Bhuiyan
Source/publisher: Dhaka Tribune
Date of publication: 2019-03-29
Date of entry/update: 2019-04-25
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Title: 'State of the Rohingyas’ mental health and physical well-being is worrying'
Description: "In an exclusive interview recently with the Dhaka Tribune's Humayun Kabir Bhuiyan, Magali Roudaut, the country chief of MSF in Bangladesh, talks about the different health challenges faced by Rohingya refugees in the country, and how the organization provides services to both the refugees and the host communities The mental health and physical wellbeing of hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas living in overcrowded refugee settlements in Cox’s Bazar remain a serious cause for concern, Magali Roudaut, the Bangladesh country representative of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), has said. “Mental health continues to be a significant concern. Many of our Rohingya patients experience flashbacks, generalized anxiety, panic attacks, recurring nightmares and insomnia, as well as illnesses such as post traumatic stress disorder and major depression. We are also seeing more chronic mental health problems and psychiatric needs,” she said. “The result of trauma experienced in Myanmar, a lack of livelihood opportunities, and concerns about their future impacts their mental health wellbeing,” said Roudaut, a French national. Médecins Sans Frontières, which means Doctors Without Borders in English, is a Geneva-based international independent medical humanitarian organization. They have been providing services in the refugee camps since the latest episode of Rohingya crisis began in August 2017. “As well as providing mental health services to Rohingya refugees, a significant portion of MSF’s mental health activities serve local communities around the refugee settlements, ensuring that the mental health needs of the local population are also addressed. From late August 2017 till February 2019, we have conducted 23,751 individual mental health consultations and 37,202 group consultations for mental health,” she added. Asked about the challenges to their physical health, Roudaut said: “Overcrowded living spaces in the camps and bad quality water contribute to the risk of disease outbreaks in the camps. Many of these contagious diseases can be easily prevented through vaccination.” Currently, children until two years of age are receiving routine vaccinations, but older children have not been systematically vaccinated and remain vulnerable to preventable diseases, like measles or diphtheria, she said, stressing the need for inclusion of all children above two in the routine vaccination program..."
Humayun Kabir Bhuiyan
Source/publisher: Dhaka Tribune
Date of publication: 2019-04-25
Date of entry/update: 2019-04-25
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Title: United Nations seeks US$920 million for Rohingya humanitarian crisis in 2019
Description: "United Nations aid agencies and NGO partners launched today the 2019 Joint Response Plan (JRP) for the Rohingya humanitarian crisis. The appeal seeks to raise US$920 million to meet the massive needs of more than 900,000 refugees from Myanmar and over 330,000 vulnerable Bangladeshis in host communities. Critical aid and services such as food, water, sanitation and shelter represent more than half of the funding needs this year. Other key sectors of the appeal include health, site management, protection activities including child protection and addressing sexual and gender-based violence, education and nutrition. More than 745,000 Rohingya refugees have fled from Myanmar’s Rakhine State to Bangladesh since August 2017, escaping violence in Myanmar and joining roughly 200,000 others already displaced in the Cox’s Bazar area by previous cycles of violence. With the generosity and support of the Bangladeshi authorities and local communities, who were the first to respond to the emergency, critical needs were met and many lives were saved..."
Source/publisher: The UN Refugee Agency
Date of publication: 2019-02-15
Date of entry/update: 2019-04-25
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Title: United Nations seeks US$920 million for Rohingya humanitarian crisis in 2019
Description: "United Nations aid agencies and NGO partners launched today the 2019 Joint Response Plan (JRP) for the Rohingya humanitarian crisis. The appeal seeks to raise US$920 million to meet the massive needs of more than 900,000 refugees from Myanmar and over 330,000 vulnerable Bangladeshis in host communities. Critical aid and services such as food, water, sanitation and shelter represent more than half of the funding needs this year. Other key sectors of the appeal include health, site management, protection activities including child protection and addressing sexual and gender-based violence, education and nutrition. More than 745,000 Rohingya refugees have fled from Myanmar’s Rakhine State to Bangladesh since August 2017, escaping violence in Myanmar and joining roughly 200,000 others already displaced in the Cox’s Bazar area by previous cycles of violence. With the generosity and support of the Bangladeshi authorities and local communities, who were the first to respond to the emergency, critical needs were met and many lives were saved..."
Source/publisher: The UN Refugee Agency
Date of publication: 2019-02-15
Date of entry/update: 2019-04-25
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Title: Bangladesh deploys armed border guards on island
Description: ''Bangladesh on Sunday deployed armed border guards to an island near its southern border with Myanmar for the first time in 20 years, according to officials. Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) distributed images showing dozens of troops carrying assault rifles disembarking at Saint Martin’s island, a small island in the Bay of Bengal that has caused diplomatic tensions between the neighbors. The BGB said the troop deployment was part of “regular activities” to protect the border and tackle drug trafficking. But the force’s lieutenant colonel, Sarker Mohammad Mustafizur Rahman, told AFP it was the first time since 1997 that their guards had been deployed there. “After more than 20 years we felt we should deploy,” he said. The deployment comes just two months after Bangladesh’s Foreign Ministry summoned Myanmar’s ambassador in Dhaka to protest the inclusion of Saint Martin inside their territory in some maps printed inside the Southeast Asian country. He was also summoned in October last year, after a Myanmar government website depicted the island as within Myanmar’s territory. Ties between the neighbors have soured since the Myanmar military launched a crackdown on the Rohingya minority in Rakhine, a troubled western state bordering Bangladesh...''
Source/publisher: Asia Times
Date of publication: 2019-04-08
Date of entry/update: 2019-04-11
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Title: An Unholy Alliance: Monks and the Military in Myanmar
Description: ''With almost 90 percent of Myanmar's population being devoted Buddhists, the religion has been at the heart of the nation's very identity for centuries. But while the pillars of Buddhist teachings are love, compassion and peace, there is a very different variation to the philosophy being taught at the Ma Ba Tha monastery in Yangon's Insein township. The monks there are connected to one of the world's worst humanitarian crises, the systematic persecution and genocide of the Rohingya in Rakhine state. Al Jazeera's unprecedented access to the Ma Ba Tha monastery and its leaders offers a glimpse into how their ultra-nationalist agenda is becoming the blueprint for the political structure of the country. Is the joining of forces between monks and generals threatening Myanmar's young and fragile democracy?...''
Source/publisher: Al Jazeera
Date of publication: 2019-03-18
Date of entry/update: 2019-03-19
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Language: English, Burmese (မြန်မာဘာသာ)
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Title: BURMA MUST ALLOW AID ACCESS FOR ALL AREAS OF RAKHINE STATE
Description: ''Burma Human Rights Network reiterates its calls on the Burmese Government to allow unhindered and complete access for NGOs in northern Rakhine State. Since the military campaign against the Rohingya began on August 25th, 2017, residents have complained of widespread shortages of food and medical aid in Buthidaung, Rathedaung and Maungdaw Townships. While some aid slowly trickled in during the past year, several areas have reported ongoing shortages or no access to aid at all. With the recent conflict between the Arakan Army and Burmese Security forces, aid has been further pushed out leaving the Rohingya and many ethnic Rakhine in an even worse position. “The Burmese authorities continue to show there is no limit to their cruelty and callousness by depriving civilians of aid as punishment for conflicts they have no control over. The international community cannot ignore widespread hunger and disease are likely to spread through Rohingya and Rakhine communities who have been with limited aid since 2017,” said BHRN’s executive director, Kyaw Win. While nearly 800, 000 Rohingya fled the Burmese Military’s genocidal campaign between 2016 and 2017, many stayed behind. BHRN has received regular reports from villagers of food shortages, illness, and widespread suffering. Villagers in Rathedaung have complained to BHRN of not receiving aid for the past 4 months and villagers in remote areas of Buthidaung have said they’ve gone without access to medical care since 2017. NGO access has been limited, and due to the recent conflict has been nearly shut off for the Rohingya. The current conflict between the Burmese military and the ethnic Rakhine Arakan Army is completely unrelated to the Rohingya, but they are suffering severely for it...''
Source/publisher: Burma Human Rights Network via "Progressive Voice"
Date of publication: 2018-02-27
Date of entry/update: 2019-03-09
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Title: CRISIS IN RAKHINE STATE, VIOLENCE COULD DERAIL GAINS IN MYANMAR’S PEACE PROCESS, SPECIAL ENVOY WARNS SECURITY COUNCIL, CALLING FOR UNIMPEDED HUMANITARIAN ACCESS
Description: ''Fragility, tensions and violence in Myanmar — including, but not limited to, the recent crisis in Rakhine State — risk jeopardizing important strides made in that country’s peace process, the top United Nations official in Myanmar warned the Security Council today, urging the 15-member organ to continue to lend support. “While Bangladesh and host communities have been very generous, we cannot expect this to continue indefinitely,” said Christine Schraner Burgener, the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy, referring to the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees who fled across the border from Myanmar 18 months ago. While refugees continue to live in extremely challenging conditions with few signs of hope, she added that military and civilian tensions persist in Myanmar ahead of general elections in 2020. Peace remains fragile as the country continues to wrestle with the legacy of decades of military rule and fundamental human rights issues. Calling for an end to violence, unfettered humanitarian access, efforts to tackle the root causes of tensions and inclusive sustainable development, she emphasized that the recently launched United Nations Joint Response Plan for 2019 — aimed at supporting both refugees and host communities — requires urgent funding. “Accountability is essential for combating impunity and genuine reconciliation,” she stressed, noting that Myanmar’s Independent Commission of Enquiry has responded positively to her recommendation that it engage with United Nations human rights entities. In that context, she urged the international community to continue to work to build trust with the Government. As Council members took the floor, some stressed that insufficient action has been taken by the Government of Myanmar to improve the situation in Rakhine State — thereby allowing for the safe, voluntary and dignified return of refugees. Several called for the prompt and full implementation of the recommendations of the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State, known as the Annan Report, and the memorandum of understanding agreed between the Government and several United Nations entities. Meanwhile, others warned that, if justice is not delivered to victims of serious crimes, the Council has the power to refer the situation to the International Criminal Court. The representative of the Dominican Republic was among those speakers who voiced grave concern that few signs of a clear, lasting solution to allow the return of Rohingya refugees have been seen to date. Noting that tensions in Myanmar are increasing, discrimination continues and security on the ground remains thin, he declared: “This is a disastrous situation on both sides of the border.” Condemning the serious violations of human rights and horrendous crimes perpetrated against the Rohingya, he said the time has come for the Council to move past its paralysis on the issue and act to prevent further atrocities...''
Source/publisher: UN Security Council via "Progressive Voice"
Date of publication: 2018-02-28
Date of entry/update: 2019-03-09
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Title: Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women examines the situation of Rohingya women and girls in northern Rakhine state
Description: ''The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women this afternoon reviewed the situation of Rohingya women and girls in northern Rakhine state, based on a report submitted by Myanmar under the exceptional reporting procedure. Introducing the report, Win Myat Aye, Union Minister for Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement of Myanmar, said that the situation in Rakhine state was highly complex and too complicated for outsiders to comprehend, and that any solution would require a thorough understanding of the local context and historical background, and most importantly, time. Terrorist attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) in 2016 and 2017 had undermined the Government’s efforts to bring peace, stability and socio-economic development to Rakhine state. The recommendations from the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State, led by former Secretary-General Kofi Annan, helped find a sustainable solution, he said, adding that the process of repatriation for verified residents of Myanmar from Bangladesh continued despite some naysayers. Myanmar was committed to ensuring accountability for human rights violations, including sexual violence, and stood willing and able to investigate allegations of crimes and human rights violations in its territory. In that vein, the Independent Commission of Enquiry had been set up to investigate allegations of human rights violations and related issues following the terrorist attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), with a view to seeking accountability and ensuring peace and stability in Rakhine state...''
Source/publisher: reliefweb
Date of publication: 2019-02-23
Date of entry/update: 2019-02-24
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Title: Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Mr. Mark Lowcock, Delivering better outcomes for women and girls in humanitarian crises, 22 February 2019
Description: ''A few days after starting this job, in September 2017, I went to Diffa in Niger, on the border with Nigeria, a place to which huge numbers of people, most of them women and girls, had fled from the Boko Haram terrorists who were wreaking havoc in their homelands. I met a woman called Achaitou, and her four young children. They were living under a plastic sheet. Achaitou was terrified of violence, especially fearful that she and her daughters might be abducted by armed men roaming over the border. To protect them, she took her children into the bush every night, risking disease and snakebites. A few weeks later I was in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, listening to the stories of women who had fled the violence of the Myanmar authorities in Rakhine. Stories of being forced to watch as their husbands, sons and fathers were killed. And then being themselves subject to the most extreme forms of rape and sexual violence. A few months later, I met Monga Albertine and her children, in a camp near the shores of Lake Tanganyika in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Her husband had been killed in tribal fighting, and she fled to try to save her children. She was trying to survive under a plastic sheet on a wet, slippery hillside, with not enough to eat, no school for the children and no way of making a living. And two months after that, I met a woman called Fatima in another camp in South Kordofan, in Sudan. She described the risks she took every day, gathering firewood in an area where women are frequently assaulted and raped. Most people caught up in humanitarian crises round the world are just like this. The majority are women and girls – although there are many men and boys too. Most of them are caught up in conflict. And the thing that makes it hardest to help them is how the men with guns and bombs behave in those conflicts. The world’s humanitarian agencies do a good job in saving lives and reducing suffering among people caught up in conflict. But we do not do a good enough job for women and girls. In my dozens of visits to countries caught up in crisis, the stories of women and girls have stuck with me more than any others. Stories of escape from violence and terror. Stories of barbaric acts committed against them. Stories of fear for their children and loved ones. But, stories also of resilience and hope. Women and girls defiant...''
Source/publisher: reliefweb
Date of publication: 2019-02-22
Date of entry/update: 2019-02-24
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Title: Malaysia: End Child Marriage, Protect Rohingya Refugee Girls
Description: ''The Government of Malaysia should provide refugees with the rights to work and access education in order to end child marriage and ensure protections for refugee girls, said the Rohingya Women Development Network (RWDN) and Fortify Rights today. Malaysia Foreign Minister Saiffudin Abdullah said on Tuesday that the government is considering options to provide refugees with access to public schools, hospitals, and employment. “Children should be in school, not forced into marriage,” said Sharifah Shakirah, founder and director of RWDN in Malaysia. “We encourage the Malaysian government to urgently ban child marriage and provide refugee families with legal access to jobs, schools, and health care, which would advance refugee and child rights.” RWDN and Fortify Rights conducted 11 interviews in Malaysia and Bangladesh between 2018 and 2019 with Rohingya child brides, former child brides, family members of child brides, and men arranging to marry or married to child brides. During these interviews, Rohingya girls described situations of domestic servitude, beatings, and hopelessness in Malaysia. Rohingya families also cite economic hardship and insecurity as drivers of child marriage. “I am physically and verbally abused by my husband,” a Rohingya refugee girl, 16, told RWDN and Fortify Rights in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on February 1, 2019. “I want an education. I want to be a teacher. I am not happy about getting married.” Originally from Buthidaung Township in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, the 16-year-old girl married a 24-year old Rohingya man in Malaysia on January 1, 2018. The girl’s family arranged the marriage due to financial difficulties. She told RWDN and Fortify Rights that she is now confined to a one-bedroom apartment in Kuala Lumpur where she cooks and cleans, describing slave-like conditions in a situation of domestic servitude...''
Source/publisher: Fortify Rights
Date of publication: 2019-02-21
Date of entry/update: 2019-02-23
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Title: 2019 Joint Response Plan for Rohingya Humanitarian Crisis (January-December)
Description: ''The Rohingya people have faced decades of systematic discrimination, statelessness and targeted violence in Rakhine State, Myanmar. Such persecution has forced Rohingya women, girls, boys and men into Bangladesh for many years, with signiicant spikes following violent attacks in 1978, 1991-1992, and again in 2016. Yet it was August 2017 that triggered by far the largest and fastest refugee inlux into Bangladesh. Since then, an estimated 745,000 Rohingya—including more than 400,000 children—have led into Cox’s Bazar. The immediate cause of their light was described by the UN-mandated Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar as a “widespread and systematic attack on [civilians]” including “murder, imprisonment, enforced disappearance, torture, rape, sexual slavery and other forms of sexual violence, persecution, and enslavement” with “elements of extermination and deportation” as well as “systematic oppression and discrimination [that] may also amount to the crime of apartheid.” The Government of Bangladesh has kept its borders open to leeing Rohingya and leads the humanitarian response. The people of Bangladesh continue to show exceptional hospitality in the face of human tragedy on a massive scale. In keeping with its national policies, the Government of Bangladesh refers to these Rohingya as “Forcibly Displaced Myanmar Nationals” in the present context. The UN system refers to this population as Rohingya refugees, in line with the applicable international framework for protection and solutions, as well as the resulting accountabilities for the countries of origin and asylum in addition to the international community as a whole. These terms refer to the same population...''
Source/publisher: Reliefweb
Date of publication: 2019-02-15
Date of entry/update: 2019-02-19
[field_licence]
Type: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 2.67 MB
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Title: Myanmar army shelling villages in Rakhine state, rights group told
Description: ''Myanmar soldiers are shelling villages, detaining civilians and blocking aid as part of a new crackdown in Rakhine state by some of the army units implicated in atrocities against the Rohingya, a rights group says. Villagers and local activists in the northern Myanmar state have told Amnesty International that artillery or mortar shells are being fired in the vicinity of townships and people are returning to abandoned communities to find properties looted and damaged. Military activity in the restive state has intensified since early January when an armed ethnic Rakhine group called the Arakan Army attacked four police posts, reportedly killing 13 officers. More than 5,200 people have been displaced by the subsequent fighting, the UN says, and dozens of families have reportedly fled into neighbouring Bangladesh. Nearly a million Muslim Rohingya people are sheltering in sprawling refugee camps in southern Bangladesh, but most of those displaced in the latest fighting belong to Buddhist ethnic minorities who, unlike the Rohingya, are recognised as Burmese citizens...''
Source/publisher: The Guardian
Date of publication: 2019-02-11
Date of entry/update: 2019-02-19
[field_licence]
Type: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Title: United Nations seeks US$920 million for Rohingya humanitarian crisis in 2019
Description: ''United Nations aid agencies and NGO partners launched today the 2019 Joint Response Plan (JRP) for the Rohingya humanitarian crisis. The appeal seeks to raise US$920 million to meet the massive needs of more than 900,000 refugees from Myanmar and over 330,000 vulnerable Bangladeshis in host communities. Critical aid and services such as food, water, sanitation and shelter represent more than half of the funding needs this year. Other key sectors of the appeal include health, site management, protection activities including child protection and addressing sexual and gender-based violence, education and nutrition. More than 745,000 Rohingya refugees have fled from Myanmar’s Rakhine State to Bangladesh since August 2017, escaping violence in Myanmar and joining roughly 200,000 others already displaced in the Cox’s Bazar area by previous cycles of violence...''
Source/publisher: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
Date of publication: 2019-02-15
Date of entry/update: 2019-02-19
[field_licence]
Type: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Title: UN seeks nearly $1 billion for Rohingya refugees
Description: "On February 15, the United Nations (UN) released its Joint Response Plan 2019 (JRP) in Geneva, asking donors for an additional US$920.5 million to support around 900,000 Rohingya refugees stuck in squalid camps in Bangladesh. JRP 2019 is a planning document reflecting a total wish list for funds that will be used by UN agencies and more than 100 other foreign and national non-governmental organizations.Funds requested also include various forms of support for 336,000 Bangladeshis living in “host communities” near the camps. The document itself is a 94-page opus maximus that is heavy reading for the acronym-challenged faint of heart..."
Michael Hayes
Source/publisher: Asia Times
Date of publication: 2019-02-16
Date of entry/update: 2019-02-18
[field_licence]
Type: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Title: Myanmar’s Hollow Denial of Rape of Rohingya
Description: ''Despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary, the government of Myanmar denies their armed forces raped Rohingya women and girls in a campaign of ethnic cleansing that forced more than 740,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee the country since late 2017. In a long-delayed submission to the United Nations women’s rights committee this week, Myanmar said there was “no evidence to support these wild claims” – a darkly risible denial to a very painful truth. The overwhelming evidence compiled by Human Rights Watch and other human rights organizations, the media, and the UN uncovered gruesome accounts of rape, killings, and other crimes against humanity in Myanmar’s Rakhine State. A UN-backed fact-finding mission said the atrocities included genocidal acts. Hundreds of Rohingya women and girls have said they were raped. I spoke to dozens of them. They risked both renewed trauma and stigma – with little real hope of remedy – to tell their stories. A 15-year-old girl, for instance, said soldiers dragged her out of her hut, tied her to a tree, and then raped her...''
Skye Wheeler
Source/publisher: Human Rights Watch
Date of publication: 2019-02-07
Date of entry/update: 2019-02-09
[field_licence]
Type: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Title: Rohingya Refugees Caught Between India and a Hard Place
Description: ''Recently, 31 Rohingya refugees who had fled atrocities in Myanmar found themselves trapped at the border between India and Bangladesh. Neither Indian nor Bangladeshi border guards were willing to accept them. The Indians insisted that the refugees were attempting an illegal entry from Bangladesh, while Bangladeshi authorities said that the refugees were being forcibly pushed out of India. One thing was certain: Going back to Myanmar was not an option. Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims are among the most persecuted communities in the world. Long denied citizenship rights in Myanmar, subjected to pervasive discrimination and targeted in violent attacks, many have fled or been expelled. In their desperation, these refugees have walked long distances, swum across rivers to safety, or paid human smugglers for a place on flimsy boats to carry them across treacherous seas...''
Meenakshi Ganguly
Source/publisher: Human Rights Watch
Date of publication: 2019-02-02
Date of entry/update: 2019-02-09
[field_licence]
Type: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Title: Scale of displacement across Myanmar ‘very difficult to gauge’, says UN refugee agency
Description: ''Andrej Mahecic, spokesperson for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) expressed deep concern over the humanitarian impact of the continuing violence and the “potential for both further internal displacement and the outflow of refugees”. “As part of inter-agency efforts, UNHCR stands ready to support the humanitarian response in the affected areas in Myanmar”, he stated, noting that more than 720,000 mostly-Muslim Rohingya had fled a 2017 military operation in Rakhine state, which was condemned at the time as being tantamount to genocide, by the then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights...''
Source/publisher: UN News
Date of publication: 2019-02-08
Date of entry/update: 2019-02-09
[field_licence]
Type: Individual Documents
Language: English
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