Book review: Trauma of 2017 atrocities haunts the Rohingya

The Korea Times

Kang Hyun-kyung

2021-03-21

Rohingya refugees walk at their makeshift camp on the outskirts of Jammu, India, on March 9. Authorities have begun identifying Rohingya Muslims who have taken refuge in Jammu in the past few years. AP-Yonhap

Ronan Lee's 'Myanmar's Rohingya Genocide: Identity, History and Hate Speech' traces the roots of ethnic cleansing in Myanmar

Ronan Lee's "Myanmar's Rohingya Genocide: Identity, History and Hate Speech" is an informative, timely piece that helps readers deepen their understanding of the 2017 ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people and its lingering tragic impact on them.

ED: Doing right by the Rohingya

Dhaka Tribune 

Tribune Editorial
March 21st, 2021

Photo: MAHMUD HOSSAIN OPU

We require allies and partners who will support Bangladesh in holding Myanmar accountable

When it comes to addressing the Rohingya crisis, particularly with respect to their repatriation, it is unfortunate that the situation remains mostly stagnant, with little to no progress.

To that end, Bangladesh’s persistence to find solutions must be admired, and the fact that recently, Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen discussed repatriating the Rohingya when he met Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa is proof that Bangladesh continues to do what is the right thing to do -- search for allies and eventually provide justice for the Rohingya and help them get back home safely.

Of moral illiteracy

The Tribune
Ira Pande
Mar 21, 2021

Photo for representation only. - File photo

IT’s been a long time since I gave up being a university teacher but my interest in and respect for academia remains. These days I feel concerned at what is happening on campuses across India and wonder where state interference and a cynical dismantling of academic autonomy will lead us. We all seem to have forgotten that university campuses have always buzzed with student activity and radical thinking: in some cases, such movements are based on genuine local demands (more seats for economically challenged students or more hostels for girls), while in others they are a show of solidarity with universal issues. These can range from political events in another country (Vietnam in the ’60s), human rights violations (the Rohingya in Myanmar), religious fundamentalism (Yemen and sub-Saharan African theocratic states) or a positive movement for universal peace and harmony (the anti-nuke rallies of the ’80s). Right through our own university days, we were enthusiastic participants in all such stirs. We attended student rallies and lustily raised slogans against injustice without fear of being punished for voicing such concerns.

ချီလီနိုင်ငံ အကြောင်း သိကောင်းစရာ

ချီလီနိုင်ငံရဲ့ တရားဝင်အမည်ကတော့ ချီလီသမ္မတနိုင်ငံဖြစ်ပြီး ပါလီမန် သမ္မတ စနစ်နဲ့အုပ်ချုပ်တဲ့နိုင်ငံဖြစ်ပါ တယ်။ တောင်အမေရိကတိုက်ရဲ့ အနောက်ဘက်ကမ်းရိုး တန်းတစ်လျှောက် ပစိဖိတ်သဒ္ဒရာနဲ့အင်ဒီးတောင်တန်း တွေ အကြားရှိတဲ့ချီလီနိုင်ငံဟာ ရှည်လျားကျဉ်းမြောင်းတဲ့ ကုန်းမြေကိုလည်းပိုင်ဆိုင်ထားပြီး နိုင်ငံရဲ့မြောက် ဘက်ပိုင်းမှာ ပီရူးနိုင်ငံ၊အရှေ့မြောက်ဘက်မှာတော့ ဘိုလီဗီးယားနိုင်ငံ၊ အရှေ့ဘက် မှာအာဂျင်တီး နား နိုင်ငံ၊တောက်ဘက်စွန်းပိုင်းမှာတော့ ပစိဖိတ်သမုဒ္ဒရာရဲ့ Darke Passage တည်ရှိပါတယ်။

မြန်မာ့အရေးအတွက် CSO အဖွဲ့တွေ လုံခြုံရေးကောင်စီကို တောင်းဆို

VOA

ဗွီအိုအေ (မြန်မာဌာန)
စုမြတ်မွန်
21 မတ်၊ 2021 

ကုလသမဂ္ဂ လုံခြုံရေးကောင်စီက မြန်မာနိုင်ငံအတွက် ထိထိရောက်ရောက် ဆောင်ရွက်ပေးတာ မရှိသေးတဲ့ အတွက် အခြေအနေတွေဟာ စိုးရိမ် ထိတ်လန့်စရာ အခြေအနေတွေ ရောက်ခဲ့တယ်လို့ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံထဲက လူ ထုအခြေပြုအဖွဲ့ ၅၀၀ နီးပါးက ပြောကြားလိုက်ပါတယ်။ စစ်ခေါင်းဆောင်တွေရဲ့ လုပ်ရပ်အတွက် နိုင်ငံတကာ ရာဇ ဝတ်တရားရုံး ICC ကိုတင်ပြဖို့တောင်းဆိုချက်အပါအဝင်၊ တောင်းဆိုချက်တွေကိုလည်း ကြေငြာချက်ထဲ မှာ လုံခြုံ ရေးကောင်စီကို တောင်းဆိုထားပါတယ်။ ဖြစ်လာဖို့ မလွယ်တာမှန်ပေမယ့် ဖြစ်လာနိုင်တဲ့ အခြေအေ နတွေ ရှိတယ်လို့ တောင်းဆိုသူတွေထဲမှာပါတဲ့ လူ့အခွင့်အရေးလှုပ်ရှားသူ မဝေဝေနု က ပြောပါတယ်။ မစုမြတ်မွန် က မဝေဝေနုကို ဆက်သွယ်မေးထားပါတယ်။

Myanmar’s Crisis Is Starting to Spill Beyond its Borders

THE I DIPLOMAT
By Sebastian Strangio
March 19, 2021

The country’s political crisis is well on the way to becoming a crisis for the region as a whole.

The effects of Myanmar’s escalating political crisis are beginning to be felt in neighboring countries, with reports emerging from both Thailand and India of people fleeing across borders in search of sanctuary.

On March 12, Indian media reported that the country’s Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) had written to the Chief Secretaries of the states of Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, and Arunachal Pradesh, in the country’s hilly east, to “take appropriate action as per law to check illegal influx from Myanmar into India.”

AWID Live: Civil Disobedience Movement in Myanmar

AWID19 

March 2021

The resources shared below are based on the live conversation we held on March 4th, 2021 with feminists and activists from Myanmar. Coming from different parts of the country, they spoke about the political situation on the ground and the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM), voicing their experiences and struggles.

Watch and listen to understand better what is going on for people at the forefront of the resistance and find ways to support and show solidarity.
LISTEN

Civil Disobedience Movement in Myanmar

Listen to this podcast, a conversation with four Myanmar feminists and activists, moderated by AWID.

AWID Audio - English · Civil Disobedience Movement in Myanmar

Link : Here

Up close: Applause for Myanmar civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi turned to criticism

USA TODAY

George Petras, USA TODAY
Mar. 20, 2021

Under arrest since Feb. 1, "The Lady" is Myanmar's most popular leader

Aung San Suu Kyi, at the center of the Myanmar military coup, is a Nobel Peace Prize recipient and human rights champion who has fallen from favor with the international community.

Suu Kyi, 75, is the de facto civilian leader of Myanmar who has spent years under government house arrest. She's often been compared to Nelson Mandela, the South African leader who ended apartheid in the early 1990s after being imprisoned for 27 years.

US House condemns Myanmar coup, urges freeing of detainees

FEDERAL NEWS NETWORK

By ELLEN KNICKMEYER

March 19, 2021 

The U.S. House on Friday condemned the military takeover in Myanmar, demanding the country’s junta release all the people it has detained and allow journalists to work freely.

Myanmar’s generals must allow the elected Parliament unseated by the Feb. 1 coup to resume its work, lawmakers said in a resolution.

“This military coup has not only set back the country’s democratic trajectory but also snuffed the hopes of the Burmese people for a better future,” Rep. Gerry Connolly, a Virginia Democrat, said of separate legislation approved Thursday, committing the U.S. to work with Asia states to restore democracy in Burma. Burma is another name for Myanmar.

Inside Myanmar, calls for UN intervention grow louder

The World
Patrick Winn

March 18, 2021 

A brutal military coup has some protesters calling for armed intervention — but is this a real possibility?

People walk along a deserted road blocked with improvised barricades build by anti-coup protesters to secure a neighborhood in Yangon, Myanmar, March 18, 2021.

Credit:AP

Myanmar is in the grips of a sickening cycle.

Nearly every day, unarmed protesters are gunned down by soldiers or riot cops. Social media inside the country is a churn of violent images: maimed bodies and young lives cut short.

Six weeks have passed since the military seized total power and instantly sparked a mass uprising — one powered by huge rallies and a general strike, which is grinding the economy to a crawl.

For Rohingya Survivors, Art Bears Witness

The New York Times

By Patricia Leigh Brown
March 19, 2021

They escaped traumatic circumstances in Myanmar and now live in harsh conditions. But refugees are creating murals drawn from their flourishing cultural traditions, reborn in Bangladesh camps.

The Artolution art center at the Balukhali camp in Bangladesh, where Rohingya refugees, trauma survivors, use the power of the paintbrush to create murals about Covid-19, the dangers of domestic violence and other public health concerns.Credit...Bengal Creative Media, via Artolution

 

Before he fled Myanmar in 2017, a witness to unspeakable horrors in his Rohingya village, Mohammed Nur would produce art in hiding, drawing on napkins and trash with bits of charcoal. Art, poetry readings and a university education were among many aspects of life that were not allowed for Rohingya Muslims like himself.

Uphold the 'Responsibility to Protect' principle against Myanmar

NewSTRAITSTIMES

March 18, 2021


Demonstrators gather along barricades during a protest against the military coup in Yangon, Myanmar. -EPA pic

LETTER: The continued mass killing of civilians by the Myanmar security forces requires firm and quick action by the international community.

On March 14, at least 60 civilians were killed by security forces and the death tolls continue rising on March 15 too.

Martial law was declared in Hlaing Tharyar, Shwe Pyithar, South Dagon, North Dagon, Dagon Harbour and North Okkalapa Townships and violence against protesters continued in other districts in Yangon, many of them lower-income areas. At the same time the military continues to frequently block internet access in order to hide its crimes and prevent protesters from organizing.

USA.- Biden called on members of the Security Council to act on the crises in Burma and Ethiopia

The Daily Guardian

Tony Joseph

Madrid, 19 (Europa Press)

02/10/2021 Joe Biden, President of the United States International President of North America, Michael Reynolds of the United States of America – POOL VIA CNP / ZUMA PRESS / CON

It requests action in Libya, Syria and Yemen and reaffirms the US commitment to multilateralism.

US President Joe Biden has called for members of the Security Council to act “urgently” in regional crises in Burma and Ethiopia, as well as in Libya, Syria and Yemen.

Through a statement, the White House has confirmed this meeting between the president and the council, where it has “reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to world leadership on the basis of values ​​and reunification with international institutions, Especially with the United Nations. “

Myanmar’s Ethnic Chinese Deny Allegiance to Beijing as They Risk Lives Against Junta

THE IRRAWADDY 

18 March 2021

Kyal Sin (left), Khant Nyar Hein (middle), and Kyaw Win Ko (right)

“Please don’t hate Chinese in Myanmar. We were born here,” a mournful mother of an ethnic Chinese teenager appealed to the people of Myanmar shortly after her son was shot dead by police in Yangon.

An ethnic Chinese, Khant Nyar Hein or Lin Yaozong, 18, was shot down on the street by the military regime’s security forces on Sunday in Tamwe Township while he was taking part in a protest. He became one of more than 200 civilians killed by police and soldiers in a flurry of lethal force unleashed on peaceful protesters following the Feb. 1 coup.

Those who learned of the fate of the first-year medical student were saddened and sympathetic to his mother, who has lost her only son.

Islamist forces eye on Rohingya community

BLITZ
Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury
Published on March 19, 2021

According to statistics, there are over one million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh who were driven out from Myanmar by its military regime. Ever-since genocide on Rohingyas began, members of this community had not only entered Bangladesh, thousands of them have illegally moved into a number of countries in Asian, Australian, African and European continent. One of the key points about the Rohingyas is – majority of them are radicalized Muslims. They have extreme hatred towards secular nations and governments.

Fears of 'digital dictatorship' as Myanmar deploys AI

REUTERS
Rina Chandran,
Thomson Reuters Foundation
MARCH 18, 2021

BANGKOK, March 18 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Protesters in Myanmar fear they are being tracked with Chinese facial recognition technology, as spiralling violence and street surveillance spark fears of a “digital dictatorship” to replace ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Human rights groups say the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to check on citizens’ movements poses a “serious threat” to their liberty.

More than 200 people have been killed since Nobel peace laureate Suu Kyi was overthrown in a Feb. 1 coup, triggering mass protests that security forces have struggled to suppress with increasingly violent tactics.

Security forces have focused on stamping out dissent in cities including the capital Naypyitaw, Yangon and Mandalay, where hundreds of CCTV cameras had been installed as part of a drive to improve governance and curb crime.

Human Rights Watch has expressed its “heightened concern” over cameras armed with AI technology that can scan faces and vehicle licence plates in public places, and alert authorities to those on a wanted list.

စစ်ကောင်စီက မျှော်လင့်ချက်ကြီးသည့် တိုင်းပြည်အနာ ဂတ်ကို လမ်းမများပေါ်တွင် သတ်ဖြတ်နေ

ဧရာဝတီ
19 March 2021

မြန်မာနိုင်ငံဆိုင်ရာ အမေရိကန် သံအမတ်ဟောင်း ဒဲရက်မစ်ချယ်

ဧရာဝတီသတင်းဌာနသည် လက်ရှိမြန်မာနိုင်ငံတွင် ဖြစ်ပေါ်နေသော အကျပ်အတည်းနှင့်ပတ်သက်ပြီး ၂၀၁၂ ခုနှစ်မှ ၂၁၀၆ ခုနှစ်အထိ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံဆိုင်ရာ အမေရိကန် သံအမတ်အဖြစ် တာဝန်ထမ်းဆောင်ခဲ့သော ဒဲရက်မစ်ချယ်နှင့် ဆွေးနွေးခဲ့သည်။ မစ်ချယ်သည် သံအမတ်အဆင့်ဖြင့် အမေရိကန် နိုင်ငံခြားရေး ဝန်ကြီးဌာန၏ ပထမ ဆုံးသော မြန်မာနိုင်ငံဆိုင်ရာ အထူးကိုယ်စားလှယ်နှင့် မူဝါဒညှိနှိုင်းသူ အဖြစ်လည်း တာဝန်ထမ်းဆောင်ခဲ့သည်။ စစ်တပ်က ခန့်အပ်သည့် သမ္မတဦးသိန်းစိန်လက်အောက်တွင် နိုင်ငံတံခါးဖွင့်ချိန်နှင့် တိုက်ဆိုင်နေသည့် သူ၏ ရာထူးသက်တမ်းအတွင်း မစ်ချယ်သည် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတွင် လူသိအများဆုံးနှင့် လူကြိုက်အများဆုံး အနောက်တိုင်းသံတမန်အဖြစ် ထမ်းဆောင်ခဲ့သည်။ သူသည် ယခုအခါ အမျိုးသား ဒီမိုကရက်တစ် အင်စတီကျု National Democratic Institute တွင် ဥက္ကဋ္ဌအဖြစ် တာဝန်ထမ်းဆောင်နေသည်။

မြန်မာနိုင်ငံမှာ အကြမ်းဖက် ဖြိုခွဲနေတာရပ်ဖို့ အင်ဒိုနီးရှား သမ္မတတိုက်တွန်း

VOA
ဗွီအိုအေ (မြန်မာဌာန)

19 မတ်၊ 2021

President Joko Widodo

မြန်မာနိုင်ငံမှာ အကြမ်းဖက်နှိမ်နင်းတာကို ချက်ခြင်းရပ်ဖို့ အင်ဒိုနီးရှားသမ္မတ ဂျိုကို ဝီဒိုဒိုက တိုက်တွန်းလိုက်ပါတယ်။

FACTBOX-Sanctions imposed against Myanmar’s generals since they seized power

REUTERS
Simon Lewis

公司新闻(英文)
MARCH 19, 2021

March 19 (Reuters) - World leaders from Washington to Singapore have condemned a military coup in Myanmar, urging generals to halt a deadly crackdown on demonstrators, release detainees including civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and restore the elected government.

Some countries have followed up with targeted financial sanctions in hopes of putting the squeeze on the generals who staged the Feb. 1 coup and convince them to change course.

With the European Union set to approve sanctions on Myanmar next week, here is a snapshot of other actions around the globe.

Military tightens grip in Myanmar as more international sanctions loom

THE Star
ASEANPLUS NEWS
Friday, 19 Mar 2021

YANGON (Reuters):Thousands of opponents of military rule in Myanmar marched in the town of Natmauk, the birthplace of revered national hero Aung San, on Thursday (March 18) in defiance of a crackdown by security forces, local media reported.

Demonstrations also took place in other towns and cities, with security forces killing three people, an activist group said. The authorities placed further restrictions on internet services, hampering protesters' ability to organise.