Parliament to press Malaysia on unsolved killings

By Pyae Thet Phyo  

U Khin Aung Myint said he would send the letter after receiving a report from the Amyotha Hluttaw. The Human Rights Committee will compile a report on those who have been killed, as well as the apparent attempt to assassinate two prominent Rakhine MPs in February.

The committee should seek the help of the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Ministry of Labour and other government departments to compile the report, he said.

U Khin Aung Myint made the comment in response to a question from U Khing Maung Latt, the Amyotha Hluttaw representative for constituency 6 in Rakhine State, who asked how the government was responding to attacks on Myanmar nationals in Malaysia.

Rakhine residents ready to protest the return of MSF

Residents of Rakhine State’s capital, Sittwe, will protest against any attempt by Medicins Sans Frontieres-Holland (MSF) to return to the state, they said, following an announcement by the government that it had signed an agreement with the non-governmental organisation allowing it to resume its medical programmes in Rakhine.

“Although the government is allowing MSF to resume operations, local people will not accept them,” said Soe Naing from Sittwe Township. He added that city residents had released a statement on August 25 saying they “absolutely rejected” any attempt by MSF to resume its work in the state.
 

UN Calls for More Aid to Rohingya Camps

FILE - Internally displaced Rohingya people take shelter in a building ahead of the arrival of Cyclone Mahasen, in Sittwe, northwestern Rakhine State, Myanmar, May 15, 2013. 

Ron Corben

September 12, 2014 10:49 AM

BANGKOK— This week U.N. officials visited Myanmar, also known as Burma, where they met with displaced Muslim Rohingya living in camps in western Rakine state, where the world deliberative body has raised concerns over poor living conditions and lack of health care.
According to experts, there remains an urgent need for health services and humanitarian assistance despite recent progress.
U.N. Development Program Asia Pacific director Haoliang Xu, during a two-day official visit to western Rakhine state, said there is a need for more humanitarian and medical assistance in displacement camps where up to 140,000 people, mostly Muslim Rohingya, are still housed.
"The most pressing need is health services it seems to me. The basic services are provided although the camp is quite crowded in the low lying area - and the most urgent need is medical services," Xu said. "The long term solution is to get these people out of the camps - that's why we want to support a multipronged approach to this issue."

Campaign Seeks to Ease Abuse of Rohingya and Lift Charges Against Reporters

PHUKET: Australians are being urged to ask the Thai Government to investigate claims of human trafficking of Rohingya boatpeople and to lift criminal defamation charges against Phuketwan journalists Alan Morison and Chutima Sidasathian.

Anyone with an interest in either of these issues could follow the lead of the Justice and International Mission of the Uniting Church in Australia, which recently published this advice:

IN BURMA in October 2012, ''ethnic cleansing'' and crimes against humanity were committed by security forces against the Rohingya ethnic group, resulting in the murders of hundreds of Rohingya and causing more than 100,000 of them to fled the country while leaving another 140,000 displaced and living in dire conditions.

Myanmar’s “Rohingya” - what’s in a name?

BANGKOK, 15 September 2014 (IRIN) - Already widely reduced to statelessness and in many cases forced into camps for displaced people, an 800,000-strong population of Muslims in western Myanmar now faces increasing efforts to eradicate the very word they use to identify themselves as a group. Under pressure from Myanmar’s nominally-civilian government, the international community sometimes appears complicit in the airbrushing of “Rohingya” from official discourse.

An ethnic Myanmar Rohingya refugee in Malaysia shows her UNHCR refugee ID card during a demonstrations in front of the United Nations office in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 16 July 2014.

EPA/AZHAR RAHIM

Myanmar's Rohingya stuck in refugee limbo in India

Monday September 15, 2014 12:10:02 PM

By Nita Bhalla

NEW DELHI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - When Kohinoor, a stateless Rohingya Muslim, fled her home in Myanmar after a wave of attacks by majority Buddhists, she hoped for a chance to rebuild her life in a new country.

She knew she would have to trek for days with little food and water and risk her life being smuggled across borders by traffickers. But she and her family did not imagine their present life of destitution and discrimination in India, the country they had chosen as their refuge.

"We were chased out of Burma (Myanmar). We were chased out of Bangladesh. Now we are in India, the people here tell us that India is not our country. So where will we go?" asked Kohinoor, 20, sitting in a makeshift tent on a patch of wasteland in southern Delhi.