More than 100 Rohingya rescued off Indonesian coast

By AFP
Published: 27 February 2013

Rohingya people from Burma wait inside a police truck for identification by immigration personnel in Lhokseumawe, Indonesia on 27 February 2013. (Reuters)

Fishermen have rescued more than 100 ethnic Rohingya asylum seekers from Burma who were found drifting in a wooden boat off western Indonesia, an official said Wednesday.

The 121 Rohingya, including six women and two children, were found adrift late Tuesday by fishermen around 25 kilometres (15 miles) from the village of Cot Trueng, on the northernmost tip of Sumatra island in Aceh province.

Rohingya Citizenship a Burmese Decision: Suu Kyi to Foreign Critics

By THA LUN ZAUNG HTET/ THE IRRAWADDY| February 26, 2013 |

NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma’s Parliament. (Photo: The Irrawaddy)

NAYPYIDAW—Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has said that Burma “must decide for itself” whether or not to grant citizenship to the Muslim minority Rohingya, but she added that the government “should listen” to foreign experts and uphold international standards in its citizenship laws.

Suu Kyi was responding to criticism by Jose Ramos-Horta, the former president of Timor Leste, and Muhammad Yunus, founder of microfinance institution Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, who wrote in The Huffington Post on Feb. 20 that Burma should amend its laws and grant the Rohingya “full citizenship.”

Deputy minister denies existence of Rohingya during parliamentary session

By DAVID STOUT
Published: 21 February 2013

Members of parliament attend the opening of the Lower House session in Naypyidaw on 4 July 2012. (Reuters)

Burma’s Deputy Immigration and Population Minister Kyaw Kyaw Win denied the existence of the Rohingya ethnic group in Burma during a parliamentary session on Wednesday.

According to a back page report in today’s The New Light of Myanmar, Kyaw Kyaw Win made the statement twice in response to questions from MPs Maung Nyo of Sittwe and Daw Khin Saw Wai of Yathedaung, who also used the opportunity to unleash their own anti-Rohingya comments in front of the lower house.

Rohingya Issue Requires ASEAN's Human Rights Responsibility

BANGKOK, Feb 16 (Bernama) -- All member countries of the Asean have been urged to jointly seek solutions to the growing problem of Rohingya migrants in Myanmar, Thai News Agency (TNA) reported.

Speaking in Bangkok on Friday at a seminar organised by Chulalongkorn University, a key panelist, Somchai Homla-or from the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), acknowledged that the 10-nation bloc has never done enough to address the growing problems of Rohingya migration, but rather leaving destination countries, like Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, to address the problem.

Arakan News Updates: U Aung Win Released

Sittwe (Akyab), Arakan - U Aung Win was released around 6 O’clock this evening after he had been arrested earlier in the morning. U Aung Win is an outspoken and fearless speaker for the rights of the persecuted Rohingyas in Arakan. Besides, he is a human rights activists who regular works with the international media that come to Arakan.

UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Burma, Mr. Tomas Ojea Quintana, was in Sittwe at the time he got arrested. Most of the persecuted Rohingyas and foreign media depend on him for interpretation. He was expecting to meet Mr. Quintana. So, the temporary detention of him was meant to not allow him to meet Mr. Quintana.

The criminals behind the Rohingya Genocide (e.g. Rakhine Extremists and others) are really afraid of being exposed!

Source: RB News

UN Expert Visits Refugee Camps

The special rapporteur on human rights travels to Burma to investigate camps for the displaced in Rakhine and Kachin states.

AFP

U.N. Human Rights envoy Tomas Ojea Quintana talks to journalists at the Rangoon international airport, Aug. 4, 2012

A U.N. human rights envoy on Monday visited refugee camps in Burma’s restive Rakhine state, where nearly 200 people were killed in communal violence last year, as part of a fact-finding mission on ethnic conflict in the country.

Tomas Ojea Quintana, who is on his seventh trip to Burma as the U.N. Special Rapporteur monitoring the rights situation in Burma, spent time speaking with refugees at camps in Myay Pone township near the state capital Sittwe.

Prominent Rohingya human rights activist arrested in Sittwe

By HANNA HINDSTROM
Published: 12 February 2013

Human rights activist Aung Win. (DVB)

A prominent Rohingya human rights activist and interpreter, who has helped many international journalists travelling to the conflict-torn Arakan state in western Burma, was detained by authorities in Sittwe on Tuesday morning, local police have confirmed.

Wake Up to Save Rohingyas!

The international community should not ignore the inhuman suffering of the innocent unarmed civilian Rohingyas and Kaman people of Arakan state, Burma , their loss of lives, destruction and painful sacrifices rendered by the pre-planned massacre blue-print of extremist Rakhine racist leadership under Dr.Aye Maung and Dr.Aye Chan with the political mask of RNDP , the current ruling party of Arakan collaborated by the under cover armed-activities of Arakan Liberation Party (ALP) insurgent group recently persuaded by the Rakhine leadership to surrender and implement the Rohingya slaughtering project of RNDP legal party of Burma.

The Muslim people of Arakan irrespective of the Rohingya and Kamen ethnicity were the victims of state sponsored genocide and displacement from their original dwellings and villages all over Arakan on the basis of their ethnicity and religion who are the native people of the land of Arakan renamed as Rakhine state by the previous military Govt.

Seven nabbed in Rohingya trafficking bust

Police, troops storm targets in Narathiwat

Police and soldiers have raided six targets in Narathiwat's Sungai Kolok district, arresting a Rohingya man together with six of his workers suspected to be involved in a gang trafficking illegal Rohingya migrants.

About 50 officers in a combined force of police and soldiers stormed targets in Sungai Kolok municipality to hunt down people involved in Rohingya trafficking about 10.30am yesterday.

In the raids, officers detained one suspect, Nuruslam, 55, a Rohingya, at a roti shop on Chuen Makka Road.

Six of his Rohingya and Myanmar workers were also apprehended.

Many small rooms had been partitioned off in the shop. Some clothes were found in the rooms but no one was staying there, security officials said.

According to investigation sources, Mr Nuruslam was involved in a syndicate of traffickers.

6,000 Rohingya arrivals since October

A total of 5,899 Rohingya migrants have illegally entered Thailand by sea on 48 occasions since October last year, Internal Security Operations Command (Isoc) spokesman Dithaporn Sasasamit said on Thursday.

 

Lt-Gen Dithaporn said of that number, 1,752 -- 1,442 men and 310 women and children --  are still in Thailand.  Others have been pushed out.

Of the male migrants, 1,177 have been lodged at holding centres run by the Immigration Police Bureau in Songkhla and nearby provinces and 265 are staying at a centre run by another agency.  The 310 women and children are now in the care of the social development and human security office of Songkhla.

Under a resolution made at a meeting of agencies at the Foreign Ministry on Jan 25, the Rohingya are to be provided with humanitarian aid for a period of not over six months.

During the six months the Foreign Ministry is to coordinate with the country of origin to issue documents to confirm their citizenship and take the illegal migrants back, and at the same time coordinate with third countries to take them for resettlement.

Source: here

Dialogue with a Rohingya refugee

Far away from their homeland, the Rohingyas in Malaysia can only wring their hands in despair over the agonising hardships faced by their families at home, writes Angeline Loh.

Jamal (not his real name) met me at a small roadside eatery after evening prayers. The weather was good, and sitting out in the open was much cooler and less crowded. 

I’ve known Jamal for some time now, since 2007 and interacted to some extent with his community on Penang Island. All these years, he very generously and trustingly allowed me access into the lives of his Rohingya community, the way their society operates and their struggle for survival. He is an excellent gatekeeper for his Rohingya community, being vigilant of their safety and always ensuring a principled and truthful approach to problems and issues affecting them.

British MPs Support Rohingya Motion In Parliament

05 Feb 2013

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Burma Campaign UK today welcomed Early Day Motion 838 on Burma, tabled by members of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Democracy in Burma (APPG Burma). So far 57 MPs across all parties have signed the motion, calling for international observers, full international access to deliver humanitarian aid, and the repeal of the racist 1982 citizenship law in Burma. An Early Day Motion (EDM) is a kind of parliamentary petition.

The motion concerns the ongoing attacks against the Rohingya Muslim ethnic minority in Burma. The British MPs noted that in October 2012 the attacks also began against the Kaman Muslim ethnic minority and that the police, state security and also national Burmese Army soldiers were reported to be taking part in some of the attacks. They also express concerns about the request of President Thein Sein for international assistance in deporting all Rohingya from Burma, which gives encouragement to the those carrying out the attacks.

Thousands of displaced Rohingya still receive ‘no aid’

Thousands of Muslim Rohingyas, who were uprooted after sectarian clashes in western Burma last year, are still not registered as internally displaced persons (IDPs) by the government and continue to be denied humanitarian assistance, local sources have warned.

An international aid worker, who recently returned from the conflict-torn Arakan state, told DVB that she visited remote areas around the state capital Sittwe, where people were forced to beg for food from locals and registered IDPs in order to survive.

“What most of the world is not aware of are the refugees that are not living in [registered] camps,” said Oddny Gumaer from Partners Relief and Development. “And those people are living in conditions that are so bad that I’m sure if the international community doesn’t do something very soon they are going to die.”
She told DVB that she was “overwhelmed” by the conditions in some of the areas she visited, which she described as akin to “concentration camps”.