Myanmar finally takes a seat at its own oil & gas feast

Source reuter, 12 June

A view of oil wells in Myanmar's village of Chauk, home to one of the longest producing oil fields in the world April 1, 2012.

NAYPYITAW, Myanmar (Reuters) - In a few months, impoverished Myanmar plans to start pumping roughly $45 million worth of oil and gas a day from the Bay of Bengal to China by pipeline. The vital fuel for China's growing economy will bypass the Malacca Straits and U.S. ally Singapore.

It will mostly also bypass Myanmar.

Though rich in natural resources, Myanmar has little capacity to use them for its own development. For decades, its leaders valued gas for the hard currency it could earn rather than the economic development it could fuel. Today, only one in four of Myanmar's citizens have electricity.

Now, two years after sweeping aside six decades of self-imposed isolation in favor of democratic reforms, Myanmar's leaders face pressure to deliver tangible results, to appease voters ahead of 2015 elections and to quell sectarian unrest.

"We're now entering the third year of the reforms," said opposition leader and Nobel price laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who used her appearance at the World Economic Forum's East Asia summit in Myanmar last week to underline her ambition to run for president. "What we really want to see now are results in the form of a real change in the lives of our people."

That, experts say, means giving Myanmar energy.

"Electricity is definitely number-one," said Hans Vriens, a Singapore-based consultant who advises companies on investing in Myanmar. "No electricity. No factories."

Making the switch from seller to consumer, however, could change Myanmar's attitude toward its resources in a way that may smack of "resource nationalism".

Multinationals vying to drill for gas and oil off Myanmar will have to negotiate with the nation as a customer instead of as a partner. And Myanmar's own customers, China and Thailand, already find themselves re-drawing old purchase agreements.

"We're renegotiating already," said Pailin Chuchottaworn, CEO of Thai oil company PTT PTT.BK, which imports $2 billion of gas a year from Myanmar. Last year, Myanmar approached PTT with a proposal to retain a fifth of the gas its sells Thailand.

"The problem is not the gas, it's the overall capacity."

Myanmar produces gas equivalent to 10.2 million tons of oil a year, according to a report prepared for the forum by Accenture and the Asian Development Bank (ADB). All but about 15 percent of it is sold to Thailand.

"Myanmar has a supply deficit," said Stephen P. Groff, ADB Vice-President for East Asia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific. "You've already set aside a fairly substantial amount of your resources for export."

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Graphics on Myanmar's oil & gas industry

Output vs consumption: link.reuters.com/pym78t

Blocks and infrastructure: link.reuters.com/ben78t

Electricity grid: link.reuters.com/xum78t

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IN THE DARK

As a result, Myanmar only counts on gas for about 12 percent of the power it generates. Most power comes instead from hydroelectric plants whose water supply varies so widely between the monsoon and dry season that they run at roughly 60 percent of generating capacity. Even in the commercial capital, Yangon, residents can only count on power for roughly a third of any given day, according to the report prepared for the forum.

A new offshore gas field near Myanmar's maritime border with Bangladesh will boost output by 75 percent. The gas is bound for China, earning state-owned Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE) another $1.8 billion annually, the report estimates. Though at least a portion of the gas has been reserved for domestic use, Myanmar lacks the onshore infrastructure to make much use of it.

Where MOGE has been putting its money is a mystery, experts say. Myanmar's government budget accounting remains murky, the result of antiquated record-keeping and widespread corruption.

As part of its plan to streamline national energy policy, Myanmar in January put MOGE along with the Ministry of Energy and the 10 other government institutions involved in energy development under a single National Energy Management Committee.

Myanmar has also vowed to join the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), set up in 2002 by then UK Prime Minister Tony Blair to help reduce the potential for payments to developing nations to feed graft and conflict.

Following President Thein Sein's visit to the United States last month, Washington is working with the government to help it meet EITI's membership criteria. Myanmar and the United States are drafting a letter of intent to publish at the June 15 launch of the Group of Eight's new transparency initiative, according to Julia Nesheiwat, Deputy Assistant Secretary at the U.S. State Department's Office of the Bureau of Energy Resources.

"They could be in the EITI by December," Nesheiwat said.

That would coincide with the deadline for companies submitting bids to Myanmar's government to explore for oil and gas in 30 offshore blocks. Bids are due on June 14, with contracts due to be awarded by year-end.

ANOTHER NIGERIA?

Whatever they find and whenever they find it, they will end up negotiating with a government more determined to lavish most of these new resources on its citizenry, which already pays less for the electricity they do receive than it costs to produce.

Energy companies say returns will need to be commensurate with growing risks, particularly as violence between Buddhists and Muslims grows in western Rakhine state.

Rakhine stretches along roughly one-third of Myanmar's coastline, and China's pipelines already traverse the state. Foreign industry and government officials worry that adding more oil and gas to this landscape could increase the likelihood that it becomes a new battle ground for religious extremism.

Drilling for oil and gas produces few local jobs. So keeping Myanmar from becoming a new Nigeria, Sudan or Iraq will require making sure that local populations benefit from the investment.

"It's critical that the government makes investments in health, in education and in agricultural productivity," said Groff at the ADB.

But the new gas is still years away. For Myanmar to deliver power quickly to its rural masses, industry executives say, it must look to Laos and Cambodia where small generators produce power by burning farm byproducts such as rice husks or pig manure.

An even simpler step would be to fix Myanmar's existing infrastructure. Aging turbines and transmission losses have cut the nation's power output to just 44 percent of capacity.

"There are a lot of GE gas turbines running at half their efficiency," said Stuart Dean, head of General Electric Co.'s (GE.N) Southeast Asian operations. "By refurbishing them you could double capacity overnight." (Editing by Mark Bendeich)

 

Ethnic-based clashes in Myanmar spill over to streets of Kuala Lumpur

Source thestar, 11 June

PETALING JAYA: For the past two weeks, Myanmar national Muhammad Sadek, 41, has not stepped out of his house for fear of losing his life.

However, on Monday, the Rohingya Arakanese Refugee Committee (RARC) program co-ordinator took a chance and went back to work at a Myanmarese restaurant near Kotaraya.

However, when he arrived there, he was pursued by two people who appeared to want to do him harm.

These were people whom he knew personally, and both happened to be Buddhists.

"They were once my friends, but not anymore. We used to work on political issues together but the issue has now gone back to religion," said Safiq, who is staying put at home for the time being.

Several violent clashes between Buddhist and Muslim Myanmar nationals have occurred in the Klang Valley, resulting in the death of two and another two in critical condition.

Mohd Sadek claims he was targeted because of his work with the Muslim Rohingya community, considered by the United Nations to be one of the world's most-persecuted minorities.

However, mindful that sectarian violence could touch a nerve with local communities, police have been quick to clamp down on any incidents here.

Last Friday, Malaysian police detained more than 1,000 Myanmarese workers in Sentul, Cheras, Brickfields and Dang Wangi.

The clashes in Malaysia reportedly started in Selayang before spreading to other parts of the Klang Valley.

The violence has been linked to recent clashes in Myanmar between Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims in the Western state of Rakhine.

Thousands of people, mostly Rohingyas, have been displaced by the clashes, when entire Muslim neighbourhoods were reportedly razed.

The clashes first started in June last year, and tensions were re-ignited again last October and more clashes took place in March this year.

"The Myanmar government is committing genocide against the Rohingya," claimed Sadek.

There have also been a number of sectarian clashes between the Burmese majority and other minority groups such as the Karen, Shan and Chin.

Myanmar is a predominantly Buddhist country, but approximately five percent of its 60 million inhabits (about three million) are Muslims.

Selayang MP William Leong Jee Keen said that Malaysians are concerned with this issue because they are many Myanmar nationals living here, especially in Selayang.

He added that based on the testimony of the victims, these attacks were not committed by armed and organised groups.

"If they start chopping one another, our locals could also be wrongly targeted," he said, adding that the Myanmar nationals deserved protection.

There are an estimated 400,000 Myanmar nationals in the country those with refugee status or working here legally or illegally. Most are working in the restaurant and construction sectors.

As of May this year, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has registered some 28,120 Rohingya asylum-seekers and refugees in Malaysia.

Malaysia is a favoured destination for the Rohingya, whom the Myanmar government classifies as Bangladeshi immigrants and have been denied citizenship of the country.

Sadek pinned the blame on the infamous 969 movement in Myanmar, a radical right-leaning Buddhist organisation.

"We are here on humanitarian grounds and don't want to trouble Malaysians," he said.

An official from an NGO working with refugees says there has not been much information regarding violence in Malaysia, but said some attacks have been indiscriminate, targeting anyone from Myanmar.

He gave the example of a Christian refugee from Myanmar who suffered a broken hand and injuries to his eye and face.

President of the Burma Campaign Malaysia, Tun Tun looks disparagingly on the recent clashes here.

"We have been living and working peacefully together all this while. We are foreigners and must follow Malaysian law," he said.

He claims that the Myanmar government is trying to create trouble ahead of the upcoming 2015 elections.

In the 2012 Burmese by-elections, the main opposition party National League for Democracy (NLD), won 43 out of 44 seats it contested from a total of 46 seats.

Tun Tun explained that the government wanted to put democracy icon and NLD general secretary Aung San Syu Kyi in a difficult situation.

"Aung San Syu Kyi can't speak out for the Rohingyas because the Buddhist majority might not support her then," he said.

Tun Tun claims that many Myanmar workers in Malaysia have posted anti- Muslim messages on social networking sites.

Burma Army breaks ceasefire in Lashio township

Source Panglong, 8 June

It is reported that new clashes between Shan State Progress Party/Shan State Army (SSPP/SSA) and the Burma Army have ruthlessly erupted when the units of the Burma Army launched a new attack on the former temporary bases in the Lashio township, northern Shan State.

"The units of the Burma Army that carried out the attacks this morning included a battalion from Lawkkai, Infantry Battalion (IB) 68, IB41 from Lashio and other battalions, totaling over 200-strong soldiers," said a villager from Hobeuk in Lashio township.

The attack took place at SSPP/SSA Battalion 851 located on Loipek ranges north-east of Hobeuk tract in Lashio. The Burma Army reportedly broke the Tangyan Agreement and began attacks on SSA this Saturday morning, which lasted from 8.00 – 11.00 am. The casualties from the Burmese side are still unknown, but SSA suffered 3 injuries, said Maj Sai La, SSPP/SSA spokesperson.

"Now our representatives from the Lahio liaison office are meeting with the Burma Army Lashio regional command. They responded by saying, we started the shooting. In fact the units of the Burma Army are intentionally advancing to carry out the attack. As they [the Burma Army] do not care for the terms of a truce, we are prepared and are alert all the time," Maj Sai La told SHAN.

It has also been reported that Sai Kawng and Sai Sang Pao, who are the 2 representatives for the SSPP/SSA liaison office from Wan Pangkham, Mong Yen tract in Namtu township, have been arrested by the government army LIB501 since 5 June at noon. They were reportedly being beaten and at the time of reporting, they have not been released. There is no news about them; we have requested that the Lashio regional commander release them, said SSPP/SSA spokesperson.

Yesterday morning from 9.00 until noon, a similar incident took place at SSPP/SSA on Loi Khe base region in Monghsu township. From a distance, the Burma Army Light Infantry Battalion (LIB) 515 under the control of Military Operations Command #2, was shelling with 60mm heavy guns. As none of the shells landed on the SSA base, no retaliation from our side occurred, said a Shan commander who oversees the units in the region.

On 11 May 2013 it has been reported that government Union Peacemaking Working Committee (UPWC) headed by the deputy president U Thein Zaw and the SSPP/SSA deputy president Maj-Gen Khurtai met in Tangyan. The Tangyan Agreement in which both sides have singed includes, adherence to the terms of the truce and that problems will not be resolved by military means, but by peace

Myanmar, Muslims and Ethnic Cleansing

Source outlookafganistan

June 09, 2013 | Mohammad Rasool Shah

'Ethnic Cleansing' is a shameful phenomenon which is used to show a situation when a majority forces the minority to either leave the area or turn themselves like them. In some cases, when religion is not involved, this aim is achieved either by forcing the majority to leave the area or finish their existence by carrying out a mass genocide. In old times, when borders were not much clear and large areas were ruled by a single king or emperor, different ethnic or religious groups used to live in the same area and there was not present much intense feeling of these differences but most of the modern states are formed on the basis of single and dominant identity of a group on the basis of ethnicity, race or religion and it left all the minorities in danger who were different from them. It is a sad fact that, in today's democratic and brightened era, such perceptions are both accepted and practiced.

Burma or Myanmar is a country in south-east Asia with borders with China, India, Thailand, Laos and Bangladesh. Burmese Buddhists make the majority of the country while there are present minorities who have migrated from the neighboring countries many centuries ago and these minorities with different ethnicities and religions have lived here for many generations and many centuries and it dates back to the time when the borders kept moving with the conquests of rulers.

The military Junta came into power in 1962 after a military coup and was penalized with strict military and economic sanctions by the world powers. Since 2011, when the military started relinquishing more of its control over the government, and released the prominent human right activist, Aung San Suu Kyi, the relations of country started improving with the rest of the world, which also resulted in the visible improvement in the economy of the country. But ethnic cleansing is a sad fact that has taken many decades to have matured into a frightening monster.

The first evidence of 'ethnic cleansing' in Burma dates back to 1982 when a bill was passed against the ethnic minorities according to which some of the ethnic groups were not recognized as the citizens of Burma and they were termed to be 'illegal citizens' of Burma and were asked to leave the country and migrate to the lands where they originally belong. Along with some other ethnic groups, Rohingya Muslims of eastern Rakhine state became its targets. But the history shows that Rohingya Muslims lived here even in 15th Century and they have lived for many generations in the area.

The law contained many strict rules that violated human rights laws and codes of democracy. According to the law, the ethnic minorities have to carry a pass to travel to even a closer area, they have to take a permit for marriage and after getting married, they have to sign a commitment to have no more than two children.

The recent killings of Rohingya Muslims in Burma, that reached to the international media, even with strict ban on media by the military government, erupted in 2012 when Rakhine Buddhists attacked the houses and businesses of Rohingya Muslims, killing more than thousands and forced hundreds and thousands of them to leave their houses and flee to the neighboring Bangladesh. After the matters got worse there, the military imposed emergency rule, allowing the military to administer the area. But the military and police have been accused of targeting Rohingya Muslims through mass arrest and arbitrary violence. The conditions got worse and more and more Muslim villages and businesses were turned into ashes and thousands were raped in horrendous massacres. A number of monks' organizations that played vital role in Burma's struggle for democracy have taken measures to block any kind of humanitarian assistance to the Rohingya community.

Now, the Rohingya Muslims represent the worst 'stateless' group of the world with two hundred thousand living in Bangladesh and many more have fled to other parts of the world while remaining in the country are still the 'illegal' residents in the land of their forefathers.

On the other hand, it is also sad that international media has not given due importance to the situation and the real story of massacre and human right violations have not been brought to the knowledge of public. It may be due to the policy of media groups or due to the strict control of military that restricts the access of media to the area.

It was lauded that Burma's government have taken measures that restored democracy and started a new era of constitutional changes that lead the party of Aung San Suu Kyi to power in the elections held in 2012 and was followed by a number of positive steps that can lead the country towards democratic stability and economic prosperity but the recent ethnic riots leave behind many question marks on the true intentions of the government and a peaceful and stable future of the country.

When the Myanmar government considers its open and democratic form of government, they must address one of the most barbaric remnants of their recent past, ethnic cleansing taking place in their midst, and right the wrongs done to the Rohingya population.

We wish the Rohingya to know that they are not alone. We hope to help share their plight with the world, in the hope and faith and trust that when the world knows of their suffering, it will no longer turn its back on their persecution. We simply add our voices to the humble demand made by Rohingya people; that their rights as our fellow human beings be respected, that they be granted the right to live peacefully and without fear in the land of their parents, and without persecution for their ethnicity or their form of worship.

We ask the world to not look away, but to raise its collective voice in support of the Rohingya. In these days of public diplomacy, the citizens, civil societies, NGOs, private investors and business community have a vital role to play in the context of democratic reforms, human rights and development around the globe. We must use this voice.

We, the Afghans make a strong appeal to the Myanmar government. You must amend the infamous 1982 law, and welcome the Rohingya as full citizens of Myanmar with all attendant rights. In doing so, you will end the possibility of radicalization of the Rohingya and channel their energies for the development of Myanmar. You will remove the impetus for extremism and terrorism being generated by the current mistreatment of this vulnerable minority. A strong, stable and democratic Myanmar is not only in the interest to the countries of the region, but will serve the cause of global peace and stability as well.

A government must in the end be judged by how it protects the most vulnerable people in its midst, and its generosity towards the weakest and most powerless. Let not the good work of this government be clouded by the continuing persecution of the Rohingya people. Otherwise, the dreams attached with a democratic government and hopes and fruits expected of this natural and effective way of government will never be achieved and the region will keep burning in the fire of poverty, radicalism and ethnicity.

Read more: http://www.outlookafghanistan.net/topics.php?post_id=7580#ixzz2Vs3N2RU0

Now it's Buddhists behaving badly

Source wnd,9 June

Buddhist clerics in Sri Lanka reportedly have launched a terror rampage against Christians that has included attacks ranging from verbal threats to beatings and church burnings.

And Christians say Sri Lankan authorities have done little or nothing to protect them.

Barnabas Aid USA Executive Director Julian Dobbs says the attacks have prompted fear among Sri Lanka's Christian minority.

"The Christians in Sri Lanka are under considerable threat and quite naturally with this many attacks there is considerable concern for safety among the Christians," Dobbs said.

Dobbs says the threats are wide ranging.

"The monks have threatened the communities; they've threatened to kill church leaders if they don't shut down the churches," Dobbs said.

Dobbs adds that since Christians make up only seven percent of the population, the Christians, both Anglican and Catholic, are keeping a low profile.

"The threats aren't directed specifically at Anglicans or Catholics, or the evangelicals. The threats are being made against the Christian community as a whole," Dobbs said.

One report from Sri Lanka says that the Sri Lankan government hasn't completely ignored the violence.

The Hambanthota district secretary reportedly had two meetings in May in an attempt to reconcile Buddhists and Christians.

An attorney who only identifies herself as Rebecca for security reasons attended both of the sessions and she told Open Doors USA that the Buddhist clerics used the meeting to accuse the Christians.

"There were questions raised as to the legality of the churches led by pastors. During the tense meeting, Buddhist clergy set forth various accusations against the pastors, but the latter were not given much opportunity to speak," Rebecca said.

Rebecca adds that the Buddhists have successfully closed a number of churches.

"One Buddhist monk said that they had already closed down 17 churches," Rebecca said.

A report by Christian human rights organization International Christian Concern puts the number at 18.

Rebecca adds that Christians in the meeting cited the country's constitution.

"The pastors and their leaders explained that the law of the land gives them a right to practice their religion anywhere in Sri Lanka and that the law does not require registration with the Ministry of Religious Affairs," Rebecca said.

"They also explained that some of the larger denominations were in fact incorporated under the Act of Parliament and have a long history of presence in this country," Rebecca said.

Even with those two sessions, Dobbs says the Christians are angry at the delayed reaction.

"The Christians are frustrated because of the authorities' inaction. It's taken over three months to investigate the various attacks," Dobbs said.

A statement from the National Christian Council of Sri Lanka attributes the violence to a strong sense of Sri Lankan nationalism.

"There is an open hate campaign directed against the religious minorities in this country," the NCCSL statement said.

Dobbs agrees that nationalism may play a part in the violence, but he adds that the monks sense a direct threat to their Buddhist religion.

"The attacks are mostly reprisals for people converting from Buddhism to Christianity. One monk did the unthinkable and engaged in self-immolation in response to the conversions to Christianity," Dobbs said.

Open Doors USA spokesman Jerry Dykstra says the Buddhist anti-Christian campaign is likely a rebirth of violence reminiscent of the lengthy civil war.

"When the three-decade civil war between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the government army ended in 2009, incidents of religious persecution in Sri Lanka went down," Dykstra said.

"But the tide of persecution seems to be rising once again, and a number of pastors expressed their anxiety over the evolving nature of religious persecution in the country, led mainly by Buddhist militancy," Dykstra said.

Dykstra adds that Sri Lanka barely missed being on the Open Doors World Watch List for 2013.

"Sri Lanka was only a few points short to make it to Open Doors' 2013 World Watch List, which ranked the 50 countries where practice of the Christian faith was most difficult," Dykstra said.

"It may be a different story this year, if the trends persist and the Sri Lankan government continues to turn a blind eye at the plight of the religious minorities in the country. Pray for the Christians there and pray that they can practice their faith in their churches without threats or attacks."

The NCCSL agrees and asks for Christians to intercede for their Sri Lankan brothers and sisters.

"We call upon the Christian community to be engaged in continuous prayer, especially upholding those directly affected and those who live and worship in vulnerable areas. We also need to pray for the perpetrators in a spirit of forgiveness and love," the NCCSL said.

Burma's Killing Fields: The Hidden War on Rohingya Muslims and Tribal Peoples [VIDEO SPECIAL]

Source ibtimes, 7 June

 

See the link

 

IBTimes UK investigates the hidden genocide currently occurring inside Burma. (Reuters)

Religious violence in Burma between the Buddhist majority and other ethnic groups, such as the Rohinga Muslims, has existed for decades if not centuries. However over the last 12 months what's been classed by both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch as a wave of ethnic cleansing has been sweeping across various townships in the Rakhine state on the country's west coast.

The United Nations estimates are that around 140,000 people have fled widespread oppression and brutal violence to makeshift refugee camps, with many dying unnecessarily. But while the international community has praised President Thein Sein for his steps towards improving democracy in Burma, they have turned a blind eye to the growing violence and persecution against the Muslim minority in the country.

In an exclusive documentary short, IBTimes UK investigates the hidden genocide currently occurring inside Burma.

Mark Farmaner, director of Burma Campaign UK

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Mark Farmaner, Director of Burma Campaign UK. (IBTimes UK)

Mark Farmaner is director of London-based human rights organisation Burma Campaign UK. He explains how the government has dealt with the country's multi-ethnic makeup since independence in 1948.

"Burma is a predominantly Buddhist country but it is not [an entirely] Buddhist country. It is made up of many different ethnic groups, many ethnic minorities and many different religions," he says.

"This is what goes to the root of why there has been a dictatorship and human rights abuses and incidents like what is taking place in Rakhine state and Kachin. The vision of the central government of Burma since independence has been that Burma is a Burmese Buddhist country and they try to impose and 'Burmanise' the rest of the ethnic minorities and religions in the country."

Martine Flokstra, emergency aid worker at Médecins Sans Frontières

Martine Flokstra, Emergency Aid Worker at Médecins Sans Frontières. (IBTimes UK)

Martine Flokstra has been in Burma for the past few months as part of the work done by Médecins Sans Frontières, which has been providing aid and healthcare in the country for the last 22 years.

Speaking via Skype, she says: "The majority of people are still living in makeshift camps, meaning straw, wood, rice bags and plastic sheeting, on rice paddies and areas which are prone to be flooded".

"There are people starting to flee during the night to other camps because they were very afraid for the upcoming rain and storms."

Gianluca Mezzofiore, foreign correspondent for IBTimes UK

Gianluca Mezzofiore, Foreign Correspondent for IBTimes UK. (IBTimes UK)

IBTimes UK exclusively revealed the sinister actions of 45-year-old Buddhist Monk Ashin Wirathu who, fresh from serving a nine-year jail term for inciting anti-Muslim prejudice, has crept back into the spotlight after sending his sermons of hate around the world through social media.

Foreign correspondent Gianluca Mezzofiore explains that the videos form part of an apartheid-like campaign in the country.

"His videos have been uploaded on YouTube and followed by thousands of people. The videos encourage people to boycott Muslim businesses and communities," he says.

"In these videos he warned Buddhists against Muslims, accusing them of raping Buddhist women. He claims that they've taken over, they're too rich, and that through their mosques they're planning foreign influence on the country."

Tun Khin, president of Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK

Tun Khin, President of Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK. (IBTimes UK)

Tun Khin is a Rohingya Muslim from Burma and president of London-based Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK. He condemns the inaction of western government to impose sanctions on Burma and says that it is critical more aid is provided.

"Well firstly, the international community have to take action immediately to provide humanitarian aid in all the areas of Rakhine. Other Rohingya are facing a restriction of movement. They can't buy food, they can't go to hospital. They have to provide humanitarian aid to protect the Rohingyas," he says.

"Secondly the international community has to support the UN Commission of Inquiry. Crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing is taking place in our country against the Rohingya's. There needs to be justice and accountability to bring those perpetrators to justice."

Zoya Phan, Burmese political activist

Zoya Phan, Burmese Political Activist. (IBTimes UK)

Zoya Phan knows the reality of extreme violence and fear. She's Burmese-born and from the Karen ethnic group. As a young girl, she and her family were forced to flee from vicious attacks on the village she called home.

She tells IBTimes UK that Britain and the rest of the international community need to be more forthright in their condemnation of Thein Sein's current regime of religious persecution, and hopes that one day a fair and equal multi-cultural society in Burma can be established.

"I can't believe that the British government and the rest of the EU countries turned a blind eye against this situation in Burma and prioritised trade and investment," she says.

"What we need to see in Burma in the future is where everyone can have freedom of expressions. Not just some people in central Burma but everyone, regardless of our race, our ethnicities, our gender, our religion. Everyone is equal and should be treated equally."

Watch the full feature video here

IBTimes UK's documentary news shorts feature is online TV at its best. High-quality reports and investigations, interviews with key players and in-depth analysis give unparalleled insight into the big global stories of the day.

Report: Rohingya refugees face 'appalling' conditions in Thailand

Source CNN, 7 June

(CNN) -- If it were not for the powerful stench and desperate shouts emanating from the wire cages, the men sitting in rows, each wearing a white skull cap, look like they could be at a prayer meeting.

But for the 276 Rohingya men sitting on the floor of two cells designed to hold just 15 people each, their situation is about as far away from a mosque as it gets -- that was the scene, vividly described and shown in an a report by British news network and CNN affiliate, Channel 4.

Appearing to have barely enough room to sit, some of the men reportedly had swollen feet and withered leg muscles from a lack of exercise and had not moved from the cage in five months.

According to a new report from Human Rights Watch (HRW), the men are among 1,700 ethnic Rohingya from Myanmar -- formerly known as Burma -- who are being held in appalling conditions in Thai immigration detention centers in Thailand's Phang Nga province and filmed secretly by the news team from Channel 4.

Tens of thousands of ethnic Rohingya from Myanmar's Arakan State have already fled persecution amid ongoing sectarian violence between the majority Buddhist Arakanese and the Muslim Rohingya.

In Burma, let's call it what it is: genocide

Source crowdvoice, 5 June

Burma's ongoing persecution of its Muslim minority may not be dominating the world's attention like other conflicts, but it should be. If the world was to look closer, it would find an ongoing genocide that only international pressure and intervention can stop.

Review recent history: Burma/Myanmar recently emerged from under the boot of a ruthless and erratic military junta. However, as representative government is taking hold, vicious ethnic and religious hatred is resurfacing. Burma is about 90% Buddhist, but the western state of Arakan has a significant population of Muslims known as Rohingya.

Although they have lived in Burma for centuries, the Rohingya have never been accepted as Burmese citizens by the former military government or by the current "democratic" one. Various media reports describe them as "stateless" or "refugees." They are despised by the majority, who often revile them as murderers, rapists and terrorists. They are prohibited from owning land or even from marrying without government permission. Most Burmese politicians are unwilling to defend this beleaguered minority. Even the nearly-sainted Aung San Suu Kyi finds it difficult to admit that the Rohingya are actually citizens of Burma.

Deprived of legal protection, Rohingya villages have been attacked by mobs that are often backed by the police. These mobs have pillaged Muslim villages, forcing the survivors to flee to squalid refugee camps along the Bangladeshi border. Human Rights Watch has called this a campaign of ethnic cleansing.

But the persecution of this vulnerable minority population has not stopped there. Last week news hit of a new Arakan policy, which was approved by the central government, that makes it illegal for Muslim families to have more than two children. Buddhists living in the same area are exempt from this restriction. The penalties for violating the policy are fines and jail time. Muslim women have reportedly resorted to unsafe, illegal abortions to avoid punishment.

Any time birth restrictions are imposed on a minority group you know something has gone very, very wrong. From the biblical King Herod's massacre of Bethlehem's innocents to the Australian campaign of stealing Aboriginal babies, history is littered with shameful examples of attempts to destroy a people by taking away their children. But it's shocking to realize that it is still happening in 2013, especially in a country that is being widely feted as a democratic success story.

Article II Section D of the UN Treaty to Prevent Genocide clearly identifies limiting births of a targeted people as a genocidal act. Stopping this ongoing catastrophe in Burma won't be easy, but the first step is to describe it accurately. We must call Burma's actions what they are: genocide.

Saqib Ali is government relations director for the Maryland chapter of CAIR.

Rohingya violence effect: 900 Myanmar nationals detained in Malaysia

Source Indianexpressnes, 6 June

 

Malaysian police said today they had detained more than 900 Myanmar nationals in a security sweep after at least two were killed last week in clashes believed to be linked to sectarian violence back home.

The two dead were likely Myanmar Buddhists killed during a spate of violent incidents in Kuala Lumpur since May 30, said Amar Singh Ishar Singh, the Malaysian capital's deputy police chief.

He added that two other people were in critical condition and the attacks were "believed to be the result of violence in Myanmar."

"The operation is to send a clear message to stop this nonsense and not bring the violence over to Malaysia," he told AFP.

He gave no details on the attacks but Malaysian media reports which said as many as four may have died have suggested Buddhists came under attack from their Muslim

countrymen seeking vengeance over violence back in Myanmar.

Deadly sectarian strife pitting Myanmar's majority Buddhists against the Muslim ethnic Rohingya minority has flared since last year in the country's western state of

Rakhine.

Muslim-majority Malaysia says it is home to more than 80,000 Myanmar nationals, many of them Rohingya fleeing alleged persecution by Myanmar's Buddhist authorities and, more recently, the Rakhine violence.

Amar said more than 250 of those detained in Malaysia were handed over to immigration authorities as they lacked proper documentation.

The rest were released and no formal arrests have yet been made as investigations continue, he said.

Myanmar on Tuesday called on Malaysia to take action against those responsible for the attacks and protect Myanmar citizens.

U Maung Hla, who heads the Burma Refugee Organisation in Malaysia, said violence between exiled Myanmar communities here was not uncommon and was "sometimes due to religion."

The Rohingya have been described by the United Nations as one of the world's most persecuted minorities. About 800,000 are estimated to live in Myanmar, which denies them citizenship, rendering them stateless.

3 Rohingya Killed in Clash with Burma Police

Source Irrawaddy news, 5 June

RANGOON — Several women villagers from Burma's Rohingya minority have been shot dead in a confrontation with security officials, police and activists said Wednesday.

A police officer in Mrauk-U Township in western Arakan State said Wednesday that three women died in the village of Parein, where they were part of a crowd that defied efforts to relocate them from the housing in which they have been living since their original homes were burned by Buddhists in a wave of sectarian clashes last year.

The officer from the Special Branch political police, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to release information, said two men and two women were injured.

A website covering Rohingya news, Rohingya Blogger, said four women were shot dead and five other villagers wounded in the Tuesday confrontation, which broke out when workers from another township came to unload wood to build new dwellings. It said that when Parein villagers sought to stop the unloading, they began quarreling with police, who opened fire on them.

The police officer said some in the Rohingya crowd carried knives, sticks and slingshots.

Several hundred people were killed and about 140,000 fled or lost their homes in Arakan State last year in two waves of sectarian violence that targeted mostly members of the Muslim Rohingya community. While the conflict seemed contained at the time, communal violence spread this year to central and northeastern Burma, with Muslims again targeted as several dozen people were killed.

The violence threatens to undermine the political and economic reforms undertaken by President Thein Sein, who came to power as an elected chief executive in 2011 after almost five decades of military rule.

The government's failure to effectively tackle the problem also risks shaking the confidence of Western countries, which have rewarded Thein Sein's reforms by lifting sanctions that were applied against the previous repressive army regime.

The latest incident took place just ahead of a regional meeting in the Burma capital Naypyidaw of the World Economic Forum, which will be attended by hundreds of business leaders and opinion-makers from around the world and is meant to showcase the positive changes made under the new government.

Similar though not fatal confrontations over relocation of Rohingyas were reported last month, when officials sought to move reluctant residents from camps thought to be vulnerable to damage from an expected cyclone. In the end, Cyclone Mahasen veered away from Burma, causing no damage. But aid workers note that many of the camps, almost all of which shelter Muslim Rohingyas, have inadequate shelter, medical care and other basic services.

Buddhists battle Muslim minority as Myanmar convulses

Source post-gazette, 2 June

LASHIO, Myanmar -- When a huge mob of Buddhist thugs crawled on the roof of Ma Sandar Soe's shop, doused it with gasoline and set it ablaze, the Buddhist businesswoman didn't blame them for burning it to the ground despite seeing it happen with her own eyes.

Instead, her wrath was reserved for minority Muslims she accused of igniting Myanmar's latest round of sectarian unrest.

"This happened because of the Muslims," she declared, sifting through charred CDs in the ruins of her recording studio.

As Myanmar grapples with its transition to democracy, its Muslim minority is experiencing its perils in vivid, bloody fashion. Hundreds have died since last year as victims of sectarian strife.

In the country's latest round of Buddhist-Muslim violence, swarms of Buddhist men roamed Lashio's crumbling streets last week, armed with rocks and sticks and machetes. Before police and army troops stepped in, anarchic crowds had torched scores of Muslim-owned shops, sending plumes of black smoke into the sky. By the time it all ended, at least one person was dead and the town's Muslim community cowered in their homes in fear.

Ma Sandar Soe's studio fell victim because it sat in the shadow of the mob's main target -- Lashio's mosque. As orange flames leapt from the ashes, she explained her rationale for pointing the finger at Muslims: The Buddhist mob was provoked by reports that a Muslim man from out of town tried to burn a Buddhist woman alive. The woman survived, badly burned, and the man was arrested.

But the roots of anti-Muslim sentiment in Myanmar, also called Burma, are far deeper and more complex than any single incident in any single town.

"There is a deep, underlying prejudice there. Even when Buddhists say they have Muslim friends, they call them 'kalar' and other derogatory terms," said Mark Farmaner of London-based Burma Campaign UK, a democracy promotion group. "That prejudice is easily exploited, and it's a cancer that is now spreading."

"Successive military regimes have implanted the dislike of Muslims in the mind of the general public and enacted ad hoc and de facto discriminatory restrictions," said Sai Latt, a doctoral candidate at Canada's Simon Fraser University who has written extensively on Muslims in Myanmar.

Myanmar society has been in a state of flux since a nominally democratic government came to power in 2011 after almost five decades of harsh military rule. A liberalized economy has accompanied the political changes. And the advent of democracy has enabled hate speech to flourish.

"There are so few sanctions now on those who provide contrarian or critical or indeed radical ideas about how society should be structured," said Nicholas Farrelly, a research fellow at Australian National University. "There is this awakening of different sentiments; some of those are very progressive and democratic, in other cases they are profoundly reactionary and or authoritarian in spirit."

Into the breach has stepped a phalanx of well-organized Buddhist monks. Aside from their religious standing, their credibility derives from historically playing a vanguard role in politics -- once upon a time against British colonial rule, in more recent decades against military dictatorship.

Describing themselves as nationalists, their sermons no longer target the powerful, but instead play on deep-seated fears of the darker-skinned outsiders, Muslims of South Asian heritage who allegedly pose a threat to racial purity and national security.

Preaching all over the country, even in areas with no discernible Muslim populations, monks belonging to the radical Buddhist movement called 969 urge Buddhists to boycott Muslim businesses and not to marry, sell property to or hire Muslims. They accuse Muslims of rape, terrorism and other depredations. The group's graffiti, T-shirts and stickers are seen everywhere -- including Lashio.

Some suggest the anti-Muslim campaign has covert official backing, perhaps from hard-liners seeking to weaken President Thein Sein and his reform agenda.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/world/buddhists-battle-muslim-minority-as-myanmar-convulses-690034/#ixzz2VCzha1y4

 

 

Letter from America: Will Myanmar’s Extermination Campaign Ever End?

Source Asiantribune, 2 June

 

By Dr. Habib Siddiqui

Long time ago I learned never to say 'never again' when it comes to Myanmar's savagery. The latest mayhem against the Muslims in the Shan state, far away from the western Rakhine state – bordering Bangladesh, once again shows that for this religious minority Myanmar is proving to be hell on earth.

Seemingly, there is no conscientious Buddhist living inside this den of hatred and intolerance that is bold enough to challenge this status quo. Daw Suu Kyi, once darling of the West, has long shown her despicable hypocrisy when she tried to ignore the monumental crimes of her Buddhist people and the government against the Rohingyas of Myanmar, considered the worst persecuted people on earth.

For years the Rohingya people living in the western Myanmar state of Rakhine, formerly known as Arakan, have been subjected to ethnic cleansing practices, and denied every right enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Now that racial hatred and religious bigotry is spreading like a cancer all across Myanmar to include other Muslims in the country.

Rumors now seem to have become a major weapon to justify elimination of a persecuted minority. Last year (May-October), we saw result of this evil concoction: with the rumor of an alleged rape and murder of a Rakhine woman, the brainwashed Rakhine terrorists went on an extermination campaign that witnessed the gruesome murder and rape of thousands of Rohingya Muslims, and the wholesale destruction of Muslim properties, schools, madrassas, mosques and shrines. Nothing of value was left intact by the marauding Buddhist savages. This ethnic cleansing drive resulted in internal displacement of some 140,000 Rohingyas within Myanmar who are living in wretched refugee camps. At least thirteen thousand Rohingyas have fled the country by sea with some seven hundred losing their lives while trying to brave the ocean to find refuge elsewhere.

"In March of this year, the extermination campaign moved to towns in central Myanmar, including Meiktila, which is located nearly 1oo miles north of the capital city Naypyitaw. There mobs of men, including Buddhist monks hacked to death at least 44 Muslim women and children belonging to Kaman, another Muslim ethnic group (which settled in Arakan during Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb's time)."

The victims above were not Kaman Muslims. They were victimized in Oct. 21-25 of 2012. The 2nd sentence in that para 4 should instead read:

"There mobs of men, including Buddhist monks hacked to death at least 44 Muslim women and children."

In his report in the New York Times Thomas Fuller wrote, "Images from Meiktila showed entire neighborhoods burned to the ground, some with only blackened trees left standing. Lifeless legs poked from beneath rubble. And charred corpses spoke to the use of fire as a main tool of the rioting mobs." President Thein Sein later declared a state of emergency.

The latest manifestation of extermination campaign came last week in the northern city of Lashio, where terrified Muslims were sheltering under army guard after their homes, shops and mosque were burned down. The unrest in the northern Myanmar city of Lashio, a city located nearly 430 miles from Myanmar's commercial capital of Rangoon (Yangon), shows how far anti-Muslim extermination campaign has spread in this Buddhist-dominated country. For years, the Shan state bordering China has been a peaceful state. And now in clear reminiscent of Meiktila, its Lashio city witnessed swarms of Buddhist men roaming Lashio's crumbling streets, armed with rocks and sticks and machetes. Before police and army troops stepped in, the Buddhist mob had torched scores of Muslim-owned shops, sending plumes of black smoke into the sky. The crowd then rampaged through the town, setting fire to Lashio's largest mosque. The mob also set fire to a Muslim school and orphanage that was so badly charred that only two walls remained.

According to official report, one Muslim was killed and five people wounded including a journalist attacked by a Buddhist mob in Wednesday's clashes. Some 1,200 Muslims were moved to Mansu Monastery after Buddhist mobs had terrorized the city – again showing government's slow response to anti-Muslim pogroms.

As reported by Reuters, Thein Maing, who took shelter at the monastery with his family, said they only dared to leave their house when they saw soldiers patrolling the streets on Wednesday. "I approached the soldiers and said, 'We are afraid and we don't know where to go. Please help us', and they sent us here." Khin Kyi's family hid in the house of an ethnic Chinese neighbor, while Buddhist men with sticks and swords prowled the area. "We were very scared. This has never happened before," she said.

The violence was sparked by a rumor last Tuesday that a Muslim man had badly burnt a Buddhist woman who sold fuel by the side of the road. After police detained the man, Buddhists surrounded the police station and demanded that he be handed over for public lynching. Badanta Ponnya Nanda, head monk of Mansu Monastery, said he tried to reason with the crowd, telling them to respect the law. "After that they went and burned the mosque," he said.

As I have noted before, it would be wrong to think that these are isolated events. These are, in fact, part of a highly organized eliminationist policy in which Myanmar government and its Buddhist community are joint partners. For years their neo-Nazi intellectuals and bigot monks have been playing the role of Julius Streicher selling, rather very successfully, the poison pill of racial and religious purity in a country that has been multi-ethnic, multi-racial and multi-religious for hundreds of years.

Pale-skinned and shaven-headed Buddhist monk Wirathu has become the public face of a Buddhist campaign, called '969', to exclude and isolate Myanmar's Muslim minority. Wirathu is a self-confessed admirer of neo-Nazi groups like the English Defense League of the UK. He says that his goals and methods are intended to counteract what he regards as growing Muslim power and numbers. His "969" campaign calls for boycotting Muslim-owned businesses and opposes intermarriage with Buddhists. He insists that 22 per cent of the nation's 60 million people are Muslim - the official estimate is only 4 per cent.

There are many Buddhists in Myanmar who take this hateful monk as their spiritual guide. It is no accident, therefore, that his 969 campaign has coincided with a surge of bloody violence in which Muslims have become the main victims. Wirathu is such a diabolical figure that he has no problem in lying or talking with a twisted tongue. When hundreds of Muslim villages and townships were burned in the Rakhine state, he had an explanation: "The Rohingya there burned down their own houses so that they could live easily in the refugee camps." As to the burning and killing by the Buddhist mob in Meiktila, he said their crimes were "forgivable". He added, "As far as Muslims go, a snake is a snake. Snakes are dangerous, so we shouldn't let them be."

As I have noted elsewhere Wirathu – the evil preacher - however, is not alone justifying the elimination campaign against the Muslims of Myanmar. There have been depraved ideologues like Aye Chan, (late) Aye Kyaw and Khin Maung Saw who for years have been parroting the government's negative stereotypes against the minority Muslims to deny their ancestral ties to Burma. As Dr. Shwe Lu Maung (Shahnawaz Khan) and other objective researchers have repeatedly shown the first settlers of Arakan were the darker-skinned people who are now known as the Rohingya. Simply put, their ties to the soil of Arakan are older than those of the Rakhine Buddhists. Obviously, facts are never important to an ultra-racist and bigot, but myth-making is to justify their eliminationist policy against a targeted minority. Thus, the indigenous, and yet endangered, Rohingya are conveniently dumped as the illegals from Bangladesh and denied their citizenship rights in Myanmar - the last apartheid state of the 21st century.

"Ahimsa," meaning not to harm others, once considered fundamental to Buddhism, has become a forgotten principle in today's Myanmar. The denial of existence has meant denial of rights for the minority Muslims, which in turn, has translated into their extermination in which from top to bottom every Buddhist of Myanmar is intimately linked as part of a national project to that end. What the past military governments have always wanted in terms of the minority Muslims is now done by its civilian partners in crime. After all, what was possible in a military dictatorship is no longer kosher in a hybrid civil-military government, run by a reform-minded Thein Sein! What a mockery with people's intelligence! It is, therefore, no accident that the government security forces are silent witnesses, if not active participants, in such an eliminationist project, and are always the last ones to arrive at the crime scene when the cleansing task has already been accomplished by their fellow Buddhist terrorists. It is also no accident that while the victims are always Muslims, those jailed for taking part in clashes with marauding Buddhists – whether in the Rakhine state or in central Myanmar – are always Muslims. Not a single Buddhist has been convicted so far. What a mockery of justice in Thein Sein's Myanmar!

In spite of decades-long campaign to eliminate the Muslim minorities of Myanmar, they are still there. It is not the Rohingya Muslims alone, there are Kaman Muslims, there are Karen Muslims, and there are Shan Muslims, there are Panthay Muslims and many others who call Myanmar their home. And this realization has made the hateful provocateurs and their local agents very angry, and more determined than ever before to finish off the eliminationist project. So, the persecuted Rohingya must now adhere to the two-child policy in clear violation of their human rights.

Ignored once again in this immoral order is the fact that Myanmar has ratified the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which obliges State parties to respect and protect the right of women and men "to decide freely and responsibly on the number and spacing of their children and to have access to the information, education and means to enable them to exercise these rights."

Tomás Ojea Quintana, the Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Myanmar, has condemned the order: "These orders provide further ammunition to local authorities, including the border security force Nasaka, to discriminate against and persecute the most vulnerable and marginalized group in Myanmar." "Only by addressing this discrimination against religious and ethnic minorities can the Government of Myanmar hope to forge integrated communities that live together in equality, peace and harmony," he underscored. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has also called on the Government not to restrict the number of children of Rohingya people.

As to the recent pogroms, the UN has voiced concerns about violence against the Rohingyas and has adopted a resolution in the General Assembly (Number 12-59569) on "The Situation of Human Rights in Myanmar," which urged the Government of Myanmar to accelerate its efforts to address discrimination, human rights violations, violence, displacement, and economic deprivation affecting various ethnic minorities and, expressing particular concern about the situation of the Rohingya minority. Unfortunately, the UN fell short of either proposing any action to save the victims or punishing the major culprits who are responsible for the tragedy of this unfortunate people. The nuclear Brahmins, shamelessly, are more interested in getting their shares of the pie of Myanmar than punishing the rogue, apartheid state for its monumental failure to protect the lives and properties of minority Muslims there. More sickening is the attitude of the ASEAN, which as a regional power, has failed to chastise one of its own. They must demand a stop to this extermination campaign against the minority Muslims with a definite timeline. They must ensure full citizenship and human rights of these Muslims. Otherwise, the local problem will not remain local and become a regional one endangering regional security and stability, if it has not already reached that magnitude.

Can ASEAN afford such a catastrophe in the making? How about South Asia?

- Asian Tribune -

 

12 Myanmar bodies found off Ranong

Source Bankokpost, 3 June

RANONG - Twelve bodies believed to be those of Myanmar migrants have been found floating at sea off the Ranong coast.

Police believe their boat could have sunk during a severe storm.

Marine Police Division 8 inspector Niran Chuayjit said officers on Sunday found nine bodies floating near Chang Island in tambon Koh Phayam of Ranong's Muang district.

A day earlier, the bodies of three Myanmar females were found in the sea in same area, near Myanmar territorial waters.

All of them could have been on the same boat travelling to Thailand for work, Pol Lt Col Niran said. The boat may have capsized during a storm, he said.

Police are in the process of contacting Myanmar officials, asking that they beef up measures to prevent people travelling to Thailand illegally by boat, he said.

Why Myanmar's Rohingya are forced to say they are Bengali

Source csmonitor, 2 June

Ethnic Rohingya in Myanmar who are being held in squalid camps and even beaten have been told there's one way out: identify themselves as Bengali.

By Jared Ferrie, Correspondent / June 2, 2013

• 

An internally displaced Rohingya woman holds her newborn baby surrounded by children in the foreground of makeshift tents at a camp for Rohingya people in Sittwe, northwestern Rakhine State, Myanmar in May 2013.

Gemunu Amarasinghe/AP

It was just after 3 a.m. when the police kicked in Zia Ul Haq's door, then handcuffed and dragged him to the nearby railway tracks. Then the beatings began.

Police with batons struck him and nine other Rohingya Muslims in handcuffs on the head and back, says Zia Ul Haq and three witnesses, some of whom also claim to have been beaten. "If you say you are Rohingya we will beat you," the officer told him. "You have to say you are a Bengali."

To do so would be to deny what Zia Ul Haq and hundreds of thousands of other Muslims in western Myanmar's Rakhine State consider to be their ethnic identity. Instead of "Rohingya," the government and state authorities refer to them as "Bengali," a term suggesting they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

The May 6 raid by dozens of police and soldiers represents the dark side of Myanmar's celebrated transition to democracy: The government continues to take a heavy-handed approach to resolving longstanding tensions between ethnic groups, a situation that's worsened with looser controls over online speech.

The United Nations says close to 140,000 Rohingya remain displaced after clashes with the ethnic Rakhine Buddhist population drove them from their homes last year. The government has elected to keep them living in apartheid-like conditions, segregated from the Rakhines, in camps they are not allowed to leave for their own security. The government's plan for eventual resettlement requires a registration process under which Rohingya are designated as "Bengali." But many Rohingya are refusing to be registered even if it means they might be resettled from the squalid temporary camps where they now live.

"The Myanmar government's response to Rohingya displacement has been guided by segregationist policies that perpetuate inter-communal tensions," said Melanie Teff of Refugees international in a May 30 statement to launch a critical report on the government's treatment of Rohingya.

Most Rohingya, even those whose families have been in Myanmar – also known as Burma – for generations, are denied citizenship under a 1982 law that renders them stateless. Human Rights Watch accused security forces of failing to prevent – and in some cases participating in – atrocities against Rohingya during clashes last year with the state's ethnic Rakhine Buddhist population.

Violence last June and October left at least 192 people dead, mostly Rohingya. Sittwe's former population of about 73,000 Rohingya has now dwindled to 5,000 people confined in one neighborhood, guarded by security forces. The vast majority of displaced Rohingya are still living in temporary camps.

Three stage plan

The Rohingya men arrested May 6 were apparently detained in connection to a protest over a government registration program that required them to state their identities as Bengali

Zia Ul Haq and the nine others were released just before dawn. But four more villagers were shackled and driven an hour to the Rakhine capital Sittwe, where they were detained at a police station without charge for 10 days in abject conditions.

"I got only water, no food," says Fazil Ahmad.

Officers at the police station and the district police headquarters denied all knowledge of the arrests. But another officer, who refused to provide his name, said the villagers had been brought in for questioning about an April 26 demonstration at a camp for displaced Rohingya during which a soldier was injured.

The Rohingya were protesting a registration process which the government was carrying before implementing a resettlement program.

Building temporary shelters is part of a three-step plan to resettle the displaced, says Hla Han, the state minister for development affairs. Afterwards, it will create jobs in industries like fishing and agriculture, then permanently resettle the displaced in locations to be determined in talks between ethnic leaders, government officials, and aid groups.

Hla Han declined to offer a timeline for the plan.

"We need to take time, we can't say exactly," he says. "Even the first stage is not settled yet."

Denial of identity

As part of the government's resettlement plan, officials were to go to camps to compile a list of displaced people and where they were from. But the list required Rohingyas to identify themselves as "Bengali." When officials tried to survey displaced people in camps around Theak Kae Pyin village, protests broke out with women and children chanting, "We are Rohingya."

Hla Han says a soldier suffered a concussion after being hit in the head by a stick. A border police officer and a civilian official suffered bruises, he says.

Aung Kyaw Win, an administrator elected to represent several villages including Nga Pon Gyee and Nga Pon Shay, says the police told him they conducted the raid after hearing that protest organizers were hiding there.

But Fious Ahmad says he was never questioned about the protests while being held in jail without food, a bed, or even a blanket to sleep on.

"I don't know why the police seized me," he says in an interview outside Nga Pon Shay's mosque a day after his release. "The police said to me, 'Say you're Bengali.' I told them, 'Yes, I'm Bengali.' But the police beat me anyway."

 

 

 

Right-wing Buddhist leading the campaign to force Muslims out of Burma says he wants his group 'to be like the English Defence League'

Source dailymailuk, 31 May

Venerable Wirathu is leader of Burma's '969' campaign to boycott Muslims

He was jailed for nine years in 2003 for inciting anti-Muslim violence

Says he wants to be like EDL who 'protect the public without violence'

Right-wing Buddhist: The Venerable Ashin Wirathu, who was jailed for nine years in 2003 for inciting anti-Muslim violence, is leader of Burma's so-called '969' campaign to boycott Islamic businesses and bring an end to inter-marriage with Buddhists

The English Defence League might be the last place you would expect a devout Buddhist monk to turn for inspiration.

But a right-wing spiritual leader in Burma has revealed how he wants to copy the EDL in his bid to rid his country of its Muslim minority.

The Venerable Ashin Wirathu, who was jailed for nine years in 2003 for inciting anti-Muslim violence, says the hardline nationalist party should be applauded for 'not carrying out violence, but protecting the public'.

His comments come a week after more than 1,000 EDL members marched on Downing Street in a protest over the killing of Drummer Lee Rigby in nearby Woolwich, swilling beer, chanting anti-Muslim slogans and clashing with anti-fascist activists. Thirteen people were arrested.

Now, orange-robed Wirathu, who leads Burma's so-called '969' campaign to boycott Islamic businesses and bring an end to inter-marriage with Buddhists, says he wants his gang members to be more like the EDL.

According to The Times, Wirathu said: 'People give me various names: The Burmese bin Laden, the bald neo-Nazi.

'[But] do you know the English Defence League? We would like to be like the EDL. Not carrying out violence, but protecting the public.'

The '969' group was behind last month's riots that saw intense clashes between its members and Muslims that left 43 people dead in the city of Meiktila.

And only yesterday, hundreds of Buddhist men on motorcycles waved iron rods in a northeastern town in Burma before setting fire to a Muslim-owned cinema in the latest incident to spill over from simmering religious tensions in the country.

Radical monks, prejudice fuel Myanmar violence

Source Yahoonews, 1 June

• 
  View Photo

  Associated Press/Gemunu Amarasinghe - A man rides a motorcycle near a burned building that housed an orphanage for Muslim children in Lashio, northern Shan State, Myanmar, Thursday, May 30, 2013. Many Buddhists …more and Muslims stayed locked inside their homes and shops were shuttered after two-days of violence in Lashio town, near the border with China, the latest region to fall prey to the country's spreading sectarian violence. (AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe) less

LASHIO, Myanmar (AP) — When a huge mob of Buddhist thugs crawled on the roof of Ma Sandar Soe's shop, doused it with gasoline and set it ablaze, the Buddhist businesswoman didn't blame them for burning it to the ground despite seeing it happen with her own eyes.

Instead, her wrath was reserved for minority Muslims she accused of igniting Myanmar's latest round of sectarian unrest.

"This happened because of the Muslims," she declared, sifting through charred CDs in the ruins of her recording studio.

As Myanmar grapples with its transition to democracy, its Muslim minority is experiencing its perils in vivid, bloody fashion. Hundreds have died since last year as victims of sectarian strife.

In the country's latest round of Buddhist-Muslim violence, swarms of Buddhist men roamed Lashio's crumbling streets this week, armed with rocks and sticks and machetes. Before police and army troops stepped in, anarchic crowds had torched scores of Muslim-owned shops, sending plumes of black smoke into the sky. By the time it all ended, at least one person was dead and the town's Muslim community cowered in their homes in fear.

Ma Sandar Soe's studio fell victim because it sat in the shadow of the mob's main target — Lashio's mosque. As orange flames leapt from the ashes, she explained her rationale for pointing the finger at Muslims: The Buddhist mob was provoked by reports that a Muslim man from out of town tried to burn a Buddhist woman alive. The woman survived, badly burned, and the man was arrested.

But the roots of anti-Muslim sentiment in Myanmar, also called Burma, are far deeper and more complex than any single incident in any single town.

"There is a deep, underlying prejudice there. Even when Buddhists say they have Muslim friends, they call them 'kalar' and other derogatory terms," said Mark Farmaner of London-based Burma Campaign UK, a democracy promotion group. "That prejudice is easily exploited, and it's a cancer that is now spreading."

"Successive military regimes have implanted the dislike of Muslims in the mind of the general public and enacted ad hoc and de facto discriminatory restrictions," said Sai Latt, a doctoral candidate at Canada's Simon Fraser University who has written extensively on Muslims in Myanmar.

Myanmar society has been in a state of flux since a nominally democratic government came to power in 2011 after almost five decades of harsh military rule. A liberalized economy has accompanied the political changes. And the advent of democracy has enabled hate speech to flourish.

"There are so few sanctions now on those who provide contrarian or critical or indeed radical ideas about how society should be structured," said Nicholas Farrelly, a research fellow at Australian National University. "There is this awakening of different sentiments; some of those are very progressive and democratic, in other cases they are profoundly reactionary and or authoritarian in spirit."

Into the breach has stepped a phalanx of well-organized Buddhist monks. Aside from their religious standing, their credibility derives from historically playing a vanguard role in politics — once upon a time against British colonial rule, in more recent decades against military dictatorship.

Describing themselves as nationalists, their sermons no longer target the powerful, but instead play on deep-seated fears of the darker-skinned outsiders, Muslims of South Asian heritage who allegedly pose a threat to racial purity and national security.

Preaching all over the country, even in areas with no discernible Muslim populations, monks belonging to the radical Buddhist movement called 969 urge Buddhists to boycott Muslim businesses and not to marry, sell property to or hire Muslims. They accuse Muslims of rape, terrorism and other depredations. The group's graffiti, T-shirts and stickers are seen everywhere — including Lashio.

"Many within the government and those close to the government share anti-Muslim sentiments and fears," said Sai Latt. "Many believe 969 is only an economic nationalist movement. They don't seem to see that 969's economic nationalism is actually a crime — spreading hate messages — that is implanting hate that prompts deadly clashes."

Some suggest the anti-Muslim campaign has covert official backing, perhaps from hard-liners seeking to weaken President Thein Sein and his reform agenda.

"The violence is well-organized and appears to be a continuous campaign to spark fires across the country, creating instability, which would suggest it has the backing of political forces," said Benedict Rogers of London-based Christian Solidarity Worldwide, which promotes religious tolerance.

"However, conspiracy theories must not be used as an excuse to ignore the deeper issues within society," he said. "If there was no prejudice within society, it would be much harder to orchestrate this violence."

Muslims are not major power brokers in Myanmar, but in any given town, some strike high commercial profiles, and they are often seen by many Buddhists as members of a wealthy merchant class. One of Lashio's most prominent hotels, for example, a six-story building that sits on a hilltop, is owned by a Muslim businessman who also runs cinemas and other shops that were ransacked this week by mobs.

The violence against Muslims first erupted a year ago on the distant southwestern coast, but it has since spread to the country's central heartland, to the outskirts of the largest city, Yangon, and now, with the riots in Lashio, to the hilly northeast along the Chinese border.

Not all monks have taken part in 969, and some say it is only a small and extremist element that doesn't represent Buddhist religion as a whole. Some prominent monks, including Gambira — who helped lead the so-called Saffron uprising against the military in 2007 — have also openly criticized the movement.

In Lashio, where more than 1,200 displaced Muslims are taking shelter in one of the city's main Buddhist monasteries, monk Pannya Sar Mi says the mobs who attacked Muslim shops this week were "terrorists."

"What happened here isn't about Buddhists or Muslims," he says. "It's about bad people doing bad things."

However, Pannya Sar Mi pointedly refused to criticize 969, saying he doesn't know much about it.

Thein Sein's administration has been heavily criticized for not doing enough to protect Muslims, but in Lashio the army's intervention appears to have stemmed further violence, indicating authorities may have learned from past riots. They deployed trucks of troops throughout the city and security forces cracked down hard on mobs. At least 25 men were arrested, one of whom was dragged from a checkpoint by his hair.

Muslims here have been shocked that the attack on one Buddhist woman by a Muslim man from out of town could spark such violence. The government issued a statement saying the assault was not religiously motivated, and there is some evidence suggesting the man suffered from mental disturbances.

Nu Nu, a 19-year-old Muslim woman who was helping her brother load salvaged television sets from their charred electronics shop, said the hatred was hard to comprehend since there had been no open animosity before.

"Most of this violence is against Muslims," she said. "But we don't understand it. We didn't do anything to them."

A 29-year-old sister of the woman who was burned said she felt horrible that the attack on her sibling spurred citywide unrest. She declined to be identified for safety reasons.

"I feel sorry for them," she said of Lashio's Muslim population. "Only the criminals should be punished. There should be no more victims. I don't want any of the good Muslims to be hurt."

But, like Ma Sandar Soe, she said she understood the Buddhist outrage.

As smoke rose from the wreckage of an entire corner of downtown, including the blackened hulk of a three-story building just a few steps from the surgical ward where her sister was recovering with severe burns across her face and body, she said, "In our country, the problems are always started by the Muslims."

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Peck reported from Bangkok, Thailand. Associated Press writer Aye Aye Win in Yangon contributed to this report.

UN expert urges Myanmar to act on local regulations targeting Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State

Source unmultimedia, 31 May

 

Tomás Ojea Quintana

Myanmar must respond unambiguously to the revival of a local order limiting the number of children that Rohingya Muslims can have to two, or face fines and prison sentences under section 188 of the Myanmar Penal Code.

The call comes from the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Myanmar, Tomás Ojea Quintana.

He says "This local order in the Northern Rakhine State townships of Buthidaung and Maungdaw is a clear-cut human rights violation targeting a particular ethnic and religious group", adding that "The Central Government must provide an unequivocal response".

The human rights expert says "Not only is the local order a violation of Myanmar's international human rights obligations and commitments, it also goes against the recommendations of the Investigation Commission set up by the President last August. That commission urged the Government to refrain from implementing non-voluntary family planning measures that may be seen as discriminatory or that would be inconsistent with human rights standards".

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which Myanmar has ratified together with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, obliges state parties to respect and protect the right of women and men 'to decide freely and responsibly on the number and spacing of their children and to have access to the information, education and means to enable them to exercise these rights.' Also, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has called on the Government not to restrict the number of children of Rohingya people.

Donn Bobb, United Nations.

Duration: 1'26″