ASEAN leaders to meet over Myanmar, chair Brunei says

REUTERS
Reuters Staff

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Brunei, the chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries, on Monday threw its support behind a regional leaders’ meeting to discuss developments in Myanmar and said it has asked officials to prepare for a meeting in Jakarta.

FILE PHOTO: Brunei's Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah attends the opening session of the 31st ASEAN Summit in Manila, Philippines, November 13, 2017. REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha

Myanmar has been in crisis since a Feb. 1 military coup that ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. Activists say at least 557 people have since been killed in a crackdown by security forces on protests and strikes across the country, where the junta has restricted internet access.

Indonesia has led efforts by members of ASEAN, of which Myanmar is a member, to encourage a negotiated solution, despite a longstanding policy of not commenting on each other’s domestic problems.

Why Myanmar’s massacres shame the world

ZAWYA

SECURITY|
By Yossi Mekelberg, Arab News
03 APRIL, 2021

To a large extent we have arrived at this point due to the past failures of the international community to hold Myanmar’s military accountable for their crimes

Members of the armed forces stand guard during a protest against the military coup, in Yangon, Myanmar March 27, 2021.REUTERS/Stringer

When representatives of all UN member states met in 2005 for the World Summit, billed at the time as the “largest gathering of world leaders in history,” and passed a resolution that set out the parameters for the Responsibility to Protect populations (R2P) from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing, there was an air of togetherness and optimism that the journey toward eradicating these horrific phenomena had begun.

ျမန္မာ့အေရး ကုလလုံျခဳံေရးေကာင္စီကို မေစာင့္ဘဲ ‘ယခုပဲ အေရးယူေဆာင္ရြက္သြားရန္’ နိုင္ငံတကာမွ ကၽြမ္းက်င္သူ မ်ား တိုက္တြန္

Mizimma

05 April 2021

ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံတ၀န္းရွိ ျပည္သူမ်ားက ေန႔စဥ္ေန႔တိုင္း ျပသထားခဲ့သည့္ ဦးေဆာင္မႈႏွင့္ စိတ္ပိုင္းျဖတ္လုပ္ေဆာင္ေနမႈတို႔ေၾကာင့္ အဆင့္လယ္ဗယ္တိုင္းရွိ နိုင္ငံတကာအသိုင္းအဝိုင္းအေနျဖင့္ ျမန္မာ့အေရးအေပၚ ထိေရာက္သည့္ အေရးယူေဆာင္ရြက္မႈ လုပ္ေဆာင္သြားေစေရးအတြက္ စိတ္ပါ၀င္စားမႈ ရွိသင့္ေနၿပီျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ကုလသမဂၢ၏ ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးဆိုင္ရာ အထူးစုံစမ္းစစ္ေဆးေရးမႉး တြန္ အန္ဒ႐ူးစ္က ၿပီးခဲ့သည့္ရက္ပိုင္းက ျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့သည့္ အြန္လိုင္းစကားဝိုင္းေဆြး‌ေႏြးပြဲ (webinar) တစ္ခုတြင္ ေျပာသြားခဲ့သည္။

At least 550 people killed by Myanmar's military since February coup, says advocacy group

CNN
By Sandi Sidhu and Salai TZ, CNN
April 4, 2021

UN envoy says a 'bloodbath is imminent' in Myanmar 04:51

(CNN)At least 550 people have been killed by Myanmar's military in the aftermath of a coup which overthrew the elected government on February 1, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), an advocacy group based in neighboring Thailand.

Security officials have responded to dissent with a brutal crackdown and detained thousands, including at least 11 people arrested in Myanmar's biggest city Yangon Friday, minutes after being interviewed by CNN journalists.

The CNN team visited the Ten Miles bazaar in Yangon's Insein township, where they interviewed a number of local residents. Among the interviewees were two women who raised the three-finger protest salute.

Desperate Burmese refugees flee to Thailand and India to escape crisis

The Guardian

Amrit Dhillon in New Delhi and Emma Graham-Harrison
Sat 3 Apr 2021 

Tensions rise on borders as thousands seek safe haven from military crackdown

Karen villagers being carried by refugees and Thai paramilitaries after crossing border at a Thai-Myanmar border in Mae Hong Son province. Photograph: Royal Thai Army Handout/EPA

Myanmar’s escalating crisis is spilling across its borders, as thousands of refugees seek safe haven in India and Thailand in the wake of the military coup and bloody crackdowns on anti-coup protesters.

Authorities in both countries have tried to block new arrivals, fearing that a steady flow may become a flood, if unrest spreading through Myanmar worsens. A top UN official warned last week that the country is “on the verge of spiralling into a failed state” if action is not taken soon to stem the bloodshed.

The catastrophic human costs of the regime’s brutal policies is visible in crowded refugee camps in Bangladesh where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees are living. Most fled after a military campaign that began in 2017, and have lived in limbo ever since.

U.N. Warns: A Bloodbath In Myanmar Is Imminent

Forbes

Dr. Ewelina U. Ochab
Contributor Policy

On March 31, 2021, U.N. Special Envoy on Myanmar, Ms. Schraner Burgener, called upon the U.N. Security Council to “consider all available tools to take collective action and do what is right, what the people of Myanmar deserve and prevent a multi-dimensional catastrophe in the heart of Asia.” She stressed that “the ground situation will only worsen,” meaning “a bloodbath is imminent.”

This screengrab provided via AFPTV video footage taken on April 1, 2021, shows protesters, wearing ... [+] AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

This highly concerning warning is supported by data. According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), total number of people killed stands at 550 since February 1, 2021, with at least 46 children. The youngest victims is a seven year-old girl, Khin Myo Chit. In addition, more than 2,750 people have been detained, including 38 sentenced. The AAPP further reports attacks and looting in villages and central Gant Gaw town in Magwe Region. “The perpetrators looted kitchen knives, money, mobile phones and jewelry. Over ten thousand residents hence fled into the forest. Number of villagers fleeing homes across Burma is rapidly increasing.” They further warn that on April 1, 2021, “junta forces ordered internet providers to shut down all wireless broadband services until further notice. Alongside the 47 nightly internet cut and 18 days of a mobile data shutdown. As a result, only a small percentage of individuals can access the internet in Burma. These oppressive measures intend to even further disrupt internal communication and silence the voice of the people.” The timing of the internet shutdown should not be seen as a coincidence. The atrocities are likely to continue when Myanmar is in the “dark.”

Why Myanmar’s massacres shame the world

ARAB NEWS

YOSSI MEKELBERG
April 03, 2021

Anti-coup protesters aim to defend themselves with homemade air rifles during a demonstration against the military coup in Yangon, Myanmar, Saturday, April 3, 2021. (AP)

When representatives of all UN member states met in 2005 for the World Summit, billed at the time as the “largest gathering of world leaders in history,” and passed a resolution that set out the parameters for the Responsibility to Protect populations (R2P) from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing, there was an air of togetherness and optimism that the journey toward eradicating these horrific phenomena had begun.

In the intervening years, this hope has been dented time and time again when such atrocities have been committed by some of the very countries that supported this resolution, while others have remained silent, or reacted to them with no real conviction. Recent events in Myanmar are a tragic reminder that R2P is still far from a universal commitment in the face of brutal regimes in the mould of the military one in Yangon, led by Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, who staged a coup against the elected government in February this year.

Myanmar’s Bloodshed Reveals a World That Has Changed, and Hasn't

The New York Times

Published April 2, 2021Family mourners at the funeral of Ma Khine Zar Thwe, 25, a bank employee, who was shot and killed on Sunday amid a protest crackdown in Yangon, Myanmar.Credit...The New York Times

Myanmar’s rulers this week crossed a threshold few governments breach anymore: They have killed, by most estimates, more than 500 unarmed citizens of their own country.

Such massacres by government forces have, even in a time of rising nationalism and authoritarianism, been declining worldwide. This is the seventh in the past decade, compared with 23 in the 1990s, according to data from Uppsala University in Sweden.

Revoking The Coup In Myanmar – Analysis

eurasiareview

James Emery
April 3, 2021

Members of Myanmar's Tatmadaw military. Photo Credit: Mehr News Agency

The situation in Myanmar following the Tatmadaw’s coup d’état of February 1, 2021 is at a critical point. The insular Tatmadaw, backed by China and Russia, along with supportive regional players, is unlikely to capitulate from traditional sanctions and a compromised United Nations (UN).

The first step in crafting an effective response is to identify the primary drivers and objectives of the coup. Tatmadaw Commander-in-Chief, General Min Aung Hlaing, controlled the Ministries of Defense (armed forces), Home Affairs (national police force), and Border Affairs. Myanmar soldiers, police, militias, and the courts help maintain the Tatmadaw’s totalitarian grip on power.

Myanmar's military junta has reportedly killed at least 43 children since coup

abc News

Morgan Winsor
2 April 2021,


"This is a nightmare scenario unfolding."

LONDON -- At least 43 children have been reportedly killed by armed forces in Myanmar in the two months since the military junta seized power, according to international humanitarian group Save the Children, which described the situation as "a nightmare scenario unfolding."

"We are shocked that children continue to be among the targets of these fatal attacks, despite repeated calls to protect children from harm," Save the Children said in a statement Wednesday. "It is clear that Myanmar is no longer a safe place for children."

Overall, at least 543 people -- adults and children -- have been killed by authorities since the Feb. 1 coup, though the actual number of fatalities is likely much higher, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a human rights organization based in Myanmar's largest city, Yangon.

MORE: US orders some diplomats to evacuate Myanmar amid deadly crackdown on protesters

PETRONAS' Upstream Operations in Myanmar Declares Force Majeure On Its Yetagun Field

2 · Apr · 2021

Media

PRESS RELEASE

Yangon, Myanmar, 2 April 2021 – PC Myanmar (Hong Kong) Limited (PCML), a subsidiary of PETRONAS, has declared Force Majeure (FM) on its Yetagun field on 1 April 2021 due to depletion of gas production at the field, located in the Andaman Sea, offshore Myanmar, in Blocks M12, M13 and M14.

The decision was made following challenges in the wells deliverability that resulted in the production rate dropping below the technical threshold of the offshore gas processing plant. PCML has temporarily ceased production at the Yetagun field until further notice.

PCML Country Head, Liau Min Hoe said: “Prior to the cessation of production, Yetagun field was producing well below the technical turndown rate of its facilities. There has been a drastic decline in production level due to subsurface challenges in the field since January 2021 and it has further deteriorated recently.

Stop ‘widespread violence’ against children in Myanmar, UN officials urge

UN News
Peace and Security
2 April 2021

Unsplash/Justin Min,The Sule pagoda in downtown Yangon, the commercial hub of Myanmar.

Senior United Nations officials on Thursday strongly condemned the ongoing violence by Myanmar’s security forces against civilians, including children, as the members of the Security Council expressed alarm at the rapidly deteriorating situation in the country.

Hundreds of civilians, including at least 44 children (as of 31 March) have been killed in the crackdown across the country, including a 7-year-old girl, who was shot while in her home. Countless more have been seriously injured, since the military coup on 1 February.

U.N. Official Warns Of 'Bloodbath' In Myanmar If Coup Isn't Reversed

WISCONSIN PUBLIC RADIO
Scott Neuman
Thursday, April 1, 2021,

Protesters, wearing red makeup to simulate tears of blood, making the three-finger salute during a demonstration against the military coup in Hlaing Township, Yangon, Myanmar, on Thursday in a photo taken from a screenshot from AFPTV video.

AFP via Getty Images

The United Nations special envoy on Myanmar has issued a stark warning that the country is heading for a likely "bloodbath" if the international community doesn't do more to stop violence against anti-junta protesters.

The remarks by Christine Schraner Burgener during a closed-door session of the U.N. Security Council, come as Myanmar's deposed leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, faced new, more serious charges brought by the junta to mark two months since her Feb. 1 ouster.

Burgener on Wednesday told the Security Council that if "collective action" isn't taken to reverse the coup, "a bloodbath is imminent." She warned of a "multi-dimensional catastrophe in the heart of Asia," according to testimony obtained by The Associated Press and Reuters.

U.N. Officials Warn Of Civil War In Myanmar

NRP

MICHAEL SULLIVAN
Heard on All Things Considered

April 2, 2021

U.N. officials warn of civil war in Myanmar as militias run by the country's numerous ethnic minorities weigh an offer to create a federal state with the deposed government of Aung San Suu Kyi.

TRANSCRIPT

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

Two months after the coup in Myanmar, protesters are still defying the military. Meanwhile, ethnic minority militias who've been fighting the military for decades have renewed their attacks as well. The military has responded to both threats with more violence against a population it has repressed for decades. Michael Sullivan reports.

When Internal Becomes International: ASEAN’s Role in Myanmar

CSIS

Diego Lingad

April 1, 2021

All eyes are on Myanmar following the country’s February 1 coup d’état. The international community is calling on The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to help find a solution. But ASEAN members are far from agreement on what role the grouping should play. Escalating violence in Myanmar, meanwhile, is pushing member states to make uncomfortable decisions.

Following the coup, Brunei, as the grouping’s current chair, quickly issued a statement calling for a return to “normalcy” in Myanmar. But Indonesia has emerged as the most vocal member of ASEAN, convening others to discuss the crisis. Singapore, Malaysia, and Brunei have appeared to support these efforts while others were more muted. Cambodia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam initially called the situation in Myanmar an internal affair. And Laos has taken a wait-and-see approach, calling for stability while expressing support for ASEAN. Myanmar itself, represented in ASEAN meetings by the new junta-appointed foreign minister Wunna Maung Lwin, further complicates the discussions. The group failed to produce a joint statement on the coup at an informal ministerial meeting on March 2. The best it could do was a chair’s statement calling for “all parties to refrain from instigating further violence” and saying the group is ready to assist with reconciliation.

Why Britain should champion UN action on Myanmar

politics.co.uk

Yasmine Ahmed
Friday 2 Apr 2021

Myanmar police enforcing the military junta’s crackdown on protesters stopped an ambulance in March, dragged four paramedics out of the vehicle, and beat at least three of them bloody, then hauled them off to jail.

The shocking attack on paramedics is just one example we have seen of the junta’s brutality as it struggles to crush protests against the military’s February 1 coup and subsequent jailing of the country’s democratically elected leaders. Everyday Myanmar security forces arbitrarily arrest, beat, and kill more protesters and political opponents; and violence by the authorities is on the rise. On March 27 alone, security forces killed at least 114 people, among them children.

Myanmar Soldiers, Aiming to Silence Protests, Target Journalists

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Richard C. Paddock
April 2, 2021

Covering a protest battle in Yangon, Myanmar, on Sunday. Three photojournalists have been shot and wounded while taking photographs of the anti-coup demonstrations.Credit...The New York Times

Ten days after seizing power in Myanmar, the generals issued their first command to journalists: Stop using the words “coup,” “regime” and “junta” to describe the military’s takeover of the government. Few reporters heeded the Orwellian directive, and the junta embraced a new goal — crushing all free expression.

Since then, the regime has arrested at least 56 journalists, outlawed online news outlets known for hard-edge reporting and crippled communications by cutting off mobile data service. Three photojournalists have been shot and wounded while taking photographs of the anti-coup demonstrations.

Islamic Zakat donations reached millions of refugees in 2020

TRT WORLD
02 April 2021

Compared to four years ago, Zakat funds increased in record numbers last year, helping more than two million refugees across the world, according to UNHCR.

The latest Islamic Philanthropy report of the UNHCR has shown that Islamic Zakat donations in 2020 saw a big increase compared to previous years, amounting to $61.5 million, reaching more than two million displaced people across the world.

Compared to the period of 2016-2018, when Islamic donations had reached more than 34,000 people, last year, both Zakat and Sadaqah, along with Sadaqah Jariyah, which are other forms of religious donations, helped nearly 2.1 million people in total.

India: Rising detentions spark panic among Rohingya

AA

Ahmad Adil 

NEW DELHI

01.04.2021

4 more Rohingya held by authorities in Indian capital, community says more than 12 detained over past week

At least four Rohingya refugees were detained in New Delhi on Wednesday for not having “proper documents,” giving rise to further apprehensions among community members living in India’s capital.

“There were four of them and they were sent to the Foreigner Regional Registration Office,” Rajendra Prasad Meena, a senior police officer, told Anadolu Agency, without sharing any further details.

Another cop, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, also gave a short response, saying the Rohingya refugees were detained because they did not have “valid documents.”

'How Can a Human Being Be Illegal?': Lawyer for Rohingya Questions India's Deportation Plans

THE WIRE
Ismat Ara
01/APR/2021

A large number of Rohingya refugees have been detained over the last month and the threat of deportation looms over them.

Rohingya children playing in a camp in Delhi. Photo: Ismat Ara

New Delhi: Indian authorities are preparing to deport Rohingya refugees currently lodged in detention centres made for undocumented migrants. Close to 300 Rohingya were detained across India just in the month of March 2021.

In 2017, thousands of Rohingya people had fled Myanmar, either by foot or sea, after the Myanmar army’s targeted violence against the community. However, the Rohingya had been fleeing Myanmar to take shelter in neighbouring countries including India for years before that too.