UN calls on Burma to urgently address Rohingya grievances

 

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Thursday there's much to be done to ensure accountability for the perpetrators of crimes against Muslim Rohingyas in Burma. (Reuters)

• By ASSOCIATED PRESS
• 27 September 2013

A group of Western and Asian governments are lauding Burma’s progress toward democracy but warning outbreaks of communal violence could undermine the reforms.

Foreign ministers meeting Thursday on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly said in a statement that Burma urgently needs to address the political and economic grievances of the Rohingyas, including the question of their citizenship.

Getting refugees to fill labour needs

By HARIATI AZIZAN

sunday@thestar.com.my

Roughing it out: Many refugees welcome the government’s proposal to allow them to work legally while they await resettlement to a third country or voluntary repatriation. Seen here are Myanmar refugees Htet Thiri (left), 25, and Than Than, 42, who are eagerly awaiting that day.

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Plans are underway for the Home Affairs Ministry to make work legal for refugees and asylum seekers in Malaysia.


THE job could not be better – apart from the good wage, food, accommodation and transport are provided. With jobs hard to come by for refugees, Somali refugee Ahmed* and friends were grateful.
Come payday, however, their “dream job” became a nightmare. Instead of getting paid, Ahmed and friends were slapped with a bill for their food and accommodation.

Refuge for the Refugees Awareness Campaign & Roadshow

Refuge for the Refugees Awareness Campaign & Roadshow

Join the Refuge for the Refugees awareness campaign & roadshow to learn more about refugees and find out how you can help to make a difference for the unlucky one.


Date/Time :
15 & 22 September 2013, 10am - 10pm

Venue :
- 15 September @ IPC Shopping Centre (opposite Sasa, Lower Ground)
- 22 September @ Tropicana City Mall (next to studio lounge, Ground Floor)


* For more information please contact : Heidy Quah - 012-307 3714 / Andrea Prisha - 012-254 7853 - See more at: http://www.eamo.my/details--1600/refuge-for-the-refugees-awareness-campaign-and-roadshow#sthash.0jxvx69t.dpuf

Join the Refuge for the Refugees awareness campaign & roadshow to learn more about refugees and find out how you can help to make a difference for the unlucky one.


Date/Time :
15 & 22 September 2013, 10am - 10pm

Venue :
- 15 September @ IPC Shopping Centre (opposite Sasa, Lower Ground)
- 22 September @ Tropicana City Mall (next to studio lounge, Ground Floor)


* For more information please contact : Heidy Quah - 012-307 3714 / Andrea Prisha - 012-254 7853 - See more at: http://www.eamo.my/details--1600/refuge-for-the-refugees-awareness-campaign-and-roadshow#sthash.0jxvx69t.dpuf

See the links: http://www.eamo.my/details--1600/refuge-for-the-refugees-awareness-campaign-and-roadshow

Join the Refuge for the Refugees awareness campaign & roadshow to learn more about refugees and find out how you can help to make a difference for the unlucky one.


Date/Time :
15 & 22 September 2013, 10am - 10pm

Venue :
- 15 September @ IPC Shopping Centre (opposite Sasa, Lower Ground)
- 22 September @ Tropicana City Mall (next to studio lounge, Ground Floor)


* For more information please contact : Heidy Quah - 012-307 3714 / Andrea Prisha - 012-254 7853 - See more at: http://www.eamo.my/details--1600/refuge-for-the-refugees-awareness-campaign-and-roadshow#sthash.0jxvx69t.dpuf

Join the Refuge for the Refugees awareness campaign & roadshow to learn more about refugees and find out how you can help to make a difference for the unlucky one.


Date/Time :
15 & 22 September 2013, 10am - 10pm

Venue :
- 15 September @ IPC Shopping Centre (opposite Sasa, Lower Ground)
- 22 September @ Tropicana City Mall (next to studio lounge, Ground Floor)


* For more information please contact : Heidy Quah - 012-307 3714 / Andrea Prisha - 012-254 7853

Disclaimer :

- See more at: http://www.eamo.my/details--1600/refuge-for-the-refugees-awareness-campaign-and-roadshow#sthash.0jxvx69t.dpuf

Join the Refuge for the Refugees awareness campaign & roadshow to learn more about refugees and find out how you can help to make a difference for the unlucky one.


Date/Time :
15 & 22 September 2013, 10am - 10pm

Venue :
- 15 September @ IPC Shopping Centre (opposite Sasa, Lower Ground)
- 22 September @ Tropicana City Mall (next to studio lounge, Ground Floor)


* For more information please contact : Heidy Quah - 012-307 3714 / Andrea Prisha - 012-254 7853

Disclaimer :

- See more at: http://www.eamo.my/details--1600/refuge-for-the-refugees-awareness-campaign-and-roadshow#sthash.0jxvx69t.dpuf

Join the Refuge for the Refugees awareness campaign & roadshow to learn more about refugees and find out how you can help to make a difference for the unlucky one.


Date/Time :
15 & 22 September 2013, 10am - 10pm

Venue :
- 15 September @ IPC Shopping Centre (opposite Sasa, Lower Ground)
- 22 September @ Tropicana City Mall (next to studio lounge, Ground Floor)


* For more information please contact : Heidy Quah - 012-307 3714 / Andrea Prisha - 012-254 7853

Disclaimer :

- See more at: http://www.eamo.my/details--1600/refuge-for-the-refugees-awareness-campaign-and-roadshow#sthash.0jxvx69t.dpuf

UNHCR mobile registration exercise for migrants

KUALA LUMPUR (UNHCR): The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is undertaking a Mobile Registration exercise for unregistered asylum-seekers in Malaysia.

This exercise will be held in stages, in several locations across Malaysia, and will take place from 2 September 2013 through to the end of the year/early 2014.

The purpose of this exercise is to register some populations of unregistered asylum seekers found to be in need of international protection.

Only unregistered asylum-seekers who are already in Malaysia and whose names are already on UNHCR’s list will be registered during this exercise.

The persons who are on the list will be contacted directly by UNHCR and will be given a Code and information on where they should go for the exercise.

219 Rohingya found on Satun coast

• Published: 11 Sep 2013 at 21.49

SATUN ― Villagers rescued 219 Rohingya migrants after their ship ran aground in shallow water off the coast in tambon Khon Klann of Thung Wa district on Wednesday evening.

All of the passengers on the ship were male.

One of the Rohingya men said that the ship left Myanmar about two weeks ago to travel to Malaysia. Speaking through an interpreter, Prapan Khaodee, a kamnan of tambon Khon Klann, he added that their food and water supplies had run out nine days ago, forcing them to drink sea water.

Desperate Rohingya not waiting for safe sailing season to flee Myanmar

Alan Morison and Chutima Sidasathian in Phuket

Rohingya Muslims gather on a street in Sittwe, Myanmar. Photo: Reuters

The influx of Rohingya refugees to Thailand has begun early this year, with a boatload landing yesterday in the country's south - the first of what's likely to be thousands of new arrivals from Myanmar.
The so-called safe sailing season usually does not start until October but yesterday's landing of 219 men at a beach in Satun province indicates the desperation of fleeing Rohingya.

First Rohingya arrive in southern Thailand by boat before sailing season

A boat with more than 200 Rohingya men onboard has been found at a beach in southern Thailand, after fleeing ongoing and escalating violence at home.

The Phuketwan Tourism News reports that the men were found on a beach in Satun province, with thousands more expected to follow in coming months.

The boat has arrived well ahead of what is considered as the safe sailing season, which is only due to start in late October.

Three other boats are reported to have set off from Myanmar's troubled Rakhine state but their locations are unknown.

Desperate Rohingya want to go home

• Published: 9 Sep 2013 at 20.07

Many incarcerated Rohingya migrants from Myanmar are asking to be sent home as their hope of being resettled in a third country fades following nine months in detention in Thailand.

Some 1,700 Rohingya asylum seekers are now incarcerated for illegal entry to Thailand in 15 Immigration Bureau detention centres across the country, mostly in southern provinces. 

What to do about the detainees remains a big headache for authorities in charge of security, foreign policy and immigration.

The first deadline for the Muslim Rohingya to be deported from Thailand was in July, but a lack of any progress on where to send them meant the government had no choice but to grant them another six months to stay.

THE PDP STRONGLY CRITICISES BBC WORLD SERVICE PROPAGENDA

To

Mr. Tony Hall

Director General of BBC TV & Radio

& Mr. Tim Davie

Acting Director-General of BBC TV & Radio

White City BBC Television Centre

Wood Land

London W12 7RJ

email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk

Phone 020 3353 3857.

Date: 5^th September 2013

THE PDP STRONGLY CRITICISES BBC WORLD SERVICE PROPAGENDA

On Radio 4 at the  10 p.m. broadcast on Friday - 25th July 2013, a news item on Burma referred Aung San Suu Kyi as the Opposition Leader and democracy activist, which you must know on the facts, is wholly wrong, as she does not objectively deserve any of these adjectives to describe her political conduct in the country. First, since she was chosen to lead the NLD after the uprising in 1988/9, she has herself not only been politically incompetent and inept, but also, highly delusional. She expected the West to send their sons and daughters to fight and die against the military regime, so as to secure as political leader and the freedom of the people of Burma.

For 22 years, she shouted for democracy while at the same time consorting with military officers in a personal way, which completely compromised her political situation. She became an object of blackmail by the military regime and there was no realistic prospect of ending military rule and to bring democracy, freedom and free speech.

'Prison camps' or risking death at sea: Anti-Muslim mob violence provokes dilemma in Myanmar

Andrew Stanbridge

Mamuda, right, sits with her two children next to the body of her husband, Nasir, who had been fatally shot by police after clashes in an internally displaced person camp in Myanmar. "I cannot stay here in the camp, I must go," said Mamuda, who hopes to flee to Malaysia.

By Danny Gold, NBC News contributor

SITTWE, Myanmar -- Driven from their homes by mob violence, many members of one of the world's most persecuted minorities face a harrowing dilemma: to tolerate horrendous conditions in sites likened to "prison camps" or to risk their lives fleeing aboard rickety boats.

"I cannot stay here in the camp, I must go," said Mamuda, a Rohingya Muslim, as she sat in a threadbare bamboo shelter, cradling her young children and watching her husband Nasir’s body be prepared for burial.

Rohingya Muslim Migrants Caught In Limbo Between India And Bangladesh

By Palash Ghosh

on September 06 2013 2:32 PM

 

The historic conflict between the Indian state of West Bengal and the nation of Bangladesh has enacted a new chapter over concerns that many Rohingya Muslims have been illegally crossing into West Bengal from Bangladesh.

Rohingya migrants Reuters

 Officials with the Indian Border Security Force’s South Bengal Frontier (BSF) said they have arrested more than one hundred illegal Rohingya immigrants this year, and most of them likely came from Myanmar, where they have faced a brutal campaign of repression from the authorities.

Customary International Law, Humanitarian Interventions and Syria

By Nikhil Shah

06 September, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

There has been a lot of discussion recently about the U.S. intervention in Syria being justified as a humanitarian intervention with the Kosovo war as a precedent.  Many international commentators in the U.S. have stated that as the U.S. is unable to get Security Council authorization for a strike against Syria, international law must ‘evolve' to allow for a humanitarian intervention to avoid prohibited chemical weapons from being used or from further atrocities from being committed by the Asad regime.  All these discussions about humanitarian interventions have conveniently avoided a discussion of whether they have been accepted as part of customary international law.  The International Court of Justice Statute defines customary international law in Article 38(1)(b) as "evidence of a general practice accepted as law."  This is generally determined through two factors: the general practice of states and what states have accepted as law.  Widespread objections by states to a practice cannot constitute customary international law. 

Anti-Rohingya Demonstrators in Arakan Are Assembly Law’s Latest Victims

By LAWI WENG / THE IRRAWADDY| Thursday, September 5, 2013 |

 

Arakanese women protest in the streets of Sittwe, the Arakan State capital, on Oct. 10, 2012. (Photo: Rakhine Straight Views)

Four Arakanese demonstrators were sentenced this week by a court in Arakan State’s Kyauktaw Township, found guilty of organizing an unauthorized protest against a plan to resettle Rohingya people in the town.

Catholic volunteers in Thailand aid refugees from Burma

Bangkok, Thailand, Sep 6, 2013 / 12:13 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Responding to a humanitarian crisis pushing tens of thousands of a minority ethnic group in Burma from their homes, Caritas Thailand is caring for refugees who have fled violence in their home country.

“Caritas Thailand has especially dedicated this year to address refugee issues as one of its priority concerns,” Fr. Pairat Sriparasert, secretary general of Caritas Thailand, told CNA last month. 

The Rohingya people are minority group who live in Burma's Rakhine state and practice Islam. They have long been persecuted by the country's Buddhist majority, and in 2012, riots in Rakhine displaced some 125,000 Rohingya.

“The Rohingya crisis is a major and crucial burning issue for Thailand and for its Southeast Asian neighbors,” Fr. Sriparasert explained.

The Rohingya – a forgotten people?

By MATT RAINS AND ALIA MEHBOOB

• 

Burma’s Rohingya Muslims have been described as the world’s forgotten people. Stripped of citizenship by the former military junta in 1982, many thousands have been stuck in limbo along the Bangladeshi border in northwestern Burma for decades.

Rohingya refugees: Facing uncertain future

Read more at: http://english.astroawani.com/photos/album/japan-limbo-500?cp

 

 

Rohingya asylum seekers trapped in limbo in Indonesia

Published on Sep 5, 2013

Indonesia is pressing Burma's government to grant legal status to the country's Muslim Rohingya.
Indonesia's Foreign Minister, Marty Natalegawa, says Burma has to press on with democratic reforms and recognize the legal rights of hundreds of thousands of stateless Muslim Rohingya.

An increasing number of Rohingya are coming to Indonesia in the hope of getting asylum in neighbouring Australia.

One group has ended up living temporary in the offices of the Jakarta Legal aid institute in the centre of the capital.

Rio Rizalino went to meet these families to hear their stories.

• Category

  News & Politics

Daily Raids and Arbitrary Arrests Against Innocent Rohingyas Common in Maung Daw

M.S. Anwar | RvisionTV

September 4, 2013

Maung Daw, Arakan- After the rumors and false reports by some propaganda media of the supposed fighting between Hlun Htein (Security Forces) and Rohingya Solidarity Organizations (RSO) along Bangladesh-Myanmar Border [for more: click here], daily raids in Rohingya villages (in Maung Daw and Buthidaung) and subsequent arbitrary arrests of innocent Rohingyas bythe authority have become quite common nowadays.

“Many villages such as Quarter 2, Quater 3, Quarter 4, Shujah (Shwe Za) and Dayl Fara of Myoma Kayindan (Shikdar Fara) in Maung Daw have been raided and plundered. They say they are raiding the village to search for the RSO operatives reported to have entered Maung Daw. In fact, they also know that there is no such RSO operative exists or has entered Maung Daw.

Thai Family Centre Rape Case Will Tear Apart Rohingya Families

By Chutima Sidasathian and Alan Morison

Thursday, September 5, 2013

PHUKET: Captive Rohingya refugees are likely to suffer because of a new policy to be imposed on family shelters in Thailand following the rape of a four-year-old girl.

The new policy, decided at a two-day conference in Bangkok that ended yesterday, will remove boys aged 12 and older from the shelters, Phuketwan has learned.

The policy is likely to further splinter Rohingya families where men are already held in police cells and Immigration detention centres and their wives and children in family refuges.

Girls and boys are also likely to be separated within family shelters. Men seem certain to be barred from entry, while officials are looking at appointing female security guards, Phuketwan has been told.

The rape that has the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security radically altering its rules took place at a shelter house in Chonburi's Banglamung district, according to a report in the Bangkok Post.

The four-year-old girl told her mother that she has been raped by several senior boys from June on, when her mother was detained on a drug charge.

When the mother was released from prison in late August and contacted the shelter to get her daughter back, the girl told her mother that she has been raped by several senior boys almost every day.

It is believed the boys were Thais.

With Rohingya families occupying many of Thailand's shelters, the would-be refugees are the ones most immediately affected by the new rules.