OPINION - Time to add Myanmar’s most influential genocidal monk Sitagu to ICC List

AA

Maung Zarni
05.08.2020

LONDON

In November last year, the International Criminal Court (ICC) moved to begin the full investigation into Myanmar’s violent international crimes and other events connected to the exodus of Rohingya from western Myanmar in decades.

In August 2017, Myanmar Tatmadaw, or the military, launched the "Security Clearance Operations," which resulted in the exodus of 750,000 Rohingya from across the borders into the adjacent Bangladesh city of Teknaf.

Implications of the Myanmar ICJ and ICC Cases for Non-Rohingya Minorities

JUST SECURITY
by Grant Shubin
July 31, 2020

(Editors Note: This article is the fourth and final piece of a special Just Security forum on the ongoing Gambia v. Myanmar litigation at the International Court of Justice and ways forward.) 

As my colleagues Param-Preet Singh and Nadira Kourt laid out in the first two pieces of this forum, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) case concerning Myanmar’s genocide of the Rohingya presents opportunities for Myanmar to finally dismantle the root causes of its longstanding persecution of Rohingya people and the international community to live up to its promise of “Never Again.” In this final forum article, I look at what all the recent international attention paid to Myanmar’s treatment of the Rohingya means for other ethnic minorities that have suffered atrocities at the hands of Myanmar’s military (the Tatmadaw).

For Myanmar's Elections to Be Free and Fair Rohingya Must Get the Right to Vote

TIME
By Matthew Smith
July 27, 2020

Rohingya refugees watch televised proceedings at the U.N.'s International Court of Justice from a refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh Dec. 12, 2019.
Allison Joyce—Getty Images

Americans won’t be the only voters going to the polls in November. Myanmar’s third national election since transitioning from half a century of military rule is slated for Nov. 8.

Already, several questions loom over this test of the country’s democratic trajectory. How will the government ensure ethnic civilians displaced by armed conflict can vote? How will Facebook protect voters from disinformation? How will the government manage campaigns and polling in the age of COVID-19? 

အမေရိကန်-တရုတ် စစ်အေးသစ်က မြန်မာအတွက် အခက် လား အချက်လား

ဧရာဝတီ
နန်းလွင်
28 July 2020

၂၀၁၂ နိုဝင်ဘာလ ဘားရက်အိုဘားမားနှင့် ဒေါ်အောင်ဆန်းစုကြည်တို့ တွေ့ဆုံမှု (ဝဲ) နှင့် ၂၀၂၀ ဇန်နဝါရီ ရှီကျင့်ဖျင်နှင့် ဒေါ်အောင်ဆန်းစုကြည်တို့ တွေ့ဆုံမှု (ယာ) / နိုင်ငံတော်အတိုင်ပင်ခံရုံ

မကြာသေးမီက မြန်မာနိုင်ငံရှိ အမေရိကန်ပြည်ထောင်စုနှင့် တရုတ်နိုင်ငံ သံရုံးများအကြား လူမှုကွန်ရက်တွင် အ ငြင်းပွားမှုသည် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံကို အင်အားကြီး နှစ်နိုင်ငံအကြား သံတမန်ရေးရာ အငြင်းပွားမှုအတွင်း သို့ ရောက် ရှိ စေသည်။ အမေရိကန် သံတမန်တဦး၏ အတွေ့အမြင်ဆောင်းပါးတွင် တောင်တရုတ်ပင်လယ်တွင် တရုတ်နိုင် ငံ၏ လုပ်ဆောင်မှုများနှင့် ဟောင်ကောင်ကို အပြင်းအထန် ဖြိုခွဲခြင်းသည် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံအပါ အဝင် အိမ်နီးချင်း နိုင်ငံများ၏ အချုပ်အခြာ အာဏာပိုင်မှုကို ထိပါးကြောင်း စွပ်စွဲသည်။

What Myanmar Is and Is Not Doing to Protect Rohingyas from Genocide

JUST SECURITY
Param-Preet Singh
July 23, 2020

(Editors Note: This article is part of a special Just Security forum on the ongoing Gambia v. Myanmar litigation at the International Court of Justice and ways forward.)


 In August 2017, the desperate plight of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims grabbed headlines when the military’s brutal campaign of murder, rape and other abuses forced more than 740,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh. In 2019, the United Nations-backed Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar warned that the 600,000 Rohingya remaining in Myanmar’s Rakhine state faced a greater than ever threat of genocide because of the government’s attempts to “erase their identity and remove them from the country.”

Chinese Investment in Myanmar: Beyond Myitsone Dam

THE I DIPLOMAT
By Ruosui Zhang
July 22, 2020

How national security concerns sealed the varying fates of Chinese investment projects in Myanmar.

Almost nine years have passed since the Thein Sein administration unilaterally announced the suspension of construction work on the Myitsone dam in September 2011. The building of the controversial hydroelectric dam is a gargantuan Chinese investment project in Myanmar, with an estimated total cost of $3.6 billion, and with a planned reservoir area larger than the size of Singapore. The suspension followed increasingly severe public protests in Myanmar expressing opposition to the Myitsone dam project. Naypyidaw credited the suspension decision to the “people’s will, and many analysts have thus attributed the unexpected suspension to the victory of popular anti-China sentiments and anti-dam movements, following Myanmar’s domestic political transition. If the “people’s will” really brought the Myitsone dam project to a halt, might other Chinese overseas projects be at risk of a similar fate?

1943 The British Military Administration of North Arakan

သမိုင်းထဲမှ ဒီမိုကရေစီနှင့် မှတ်တမ်းအမှား

TheVoiceWeekly Journal

10-Jan-2019 

သမိုင်းထဲမှ ဒီမိုကရေစီ

မြန်မာ့သမိုင်းတွင် လွတ်လပ်ရေးရသည့် ၁၉၄၈ ခုနှစ်မှ ၁၉၆၂ ခုနှစ် အတွင်း ပါလီမန်ဒီမိုကရေစီစနစ်ကို ကျင့်သုံးခဲ့ကြသည်။ ထိုကာလ သည် မြန်မာတို့ ကိုယ်ပိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ခဲ့ကြသည့်သမိုင်းတစ်လျှောက် ပထမဆုံး ဒီမို ကရေစီကျင့်သုံးသည့်ကာလတစ်ခု ဖြစ်ခဲ့သည်။ သို့သော်လည်း ထိုအချိန် ကကျင့်သုံးခဲ့သည့် ဒီမိုကရေစီသက် တမ်း သည် နှစ်ပေါင်း ၁၄ နှစ်ခန့် သာ ကြာရှည်ခဲ့သည်။ ယင်းအချိန် မှစ၍ နှစ်ပေါင်း ၆၀ကျော်သည့် အချိန် မှ ဒီမိုကရေစီ တစ်ကျော့ပြန် လည် ရောက်ရှိလာခဲ့သည်။

သို့ဖြစ်ရာ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတွင် ဒီမိုကရေစီစနစ်ကို ယခုမှကျင့်သုံးခဲ့ခြင်း မဟုတ်။ ကျင့်သုံးခဲ့ဖူးသည်။ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ တွင် ဒီမိုကရေစီကျင့် သုံး ခဲ့စဉ်ကာလ က အာဆီယံနိုင်ငံများတွင်သာမက အာရှတွင်ပါ ထိပ်တန်း နေရာတစ်ခု ရခဲ့သည်ကို တွေ့ကြရသည်။

Why war never ends in Myanmar?

Jul 15, 2020
By Cardinal Charles Bo

Buddhist, Christian and Muslim people of Myanmar, with ethnic leaders, can live the message that the world longs to hear 

We are weary of war, worn down by enmities. War disgraces everyone. Why is it that Myanmar’s conflicts never end? Where does responsibility lie?

Of course one may accuse the belligerence of the Tatmadaw, even her obstinacy in refusing a full ceasefire to allow the nation to cope with the pandemic. One may deplore the faint authority of the civilian government, or the lack of due process in the judicial system. One may accuse ethnic leaders and truant cronies who benefit too much from trade in jade or drugs to desist. One may deplore that we religious leaders are too timid in protesting injustice.

1.1 million Rohingya refugee is now out of thinking amid the pandemic

moderndiplomacy
Mohammad Kepayet
July 15, 2020

Rohingya refugees fleeing conflict and persecution in Myanmar (file photo). IOM/Mohammed

Next August will be the third anniversary of the Rohingya genocide and the forcible exile. Bangladesh has given shelter to Rohingyas who fled Myanmar in 2017. Asia never saw that amount of refuge at the same time after the liberation war of Bangladesh. Rohingya repatriation has been discussed at various times. Some discussions are in process. But suddenly the coronavirus invades the repatriation debate. So the Rohingya repatriation process is coming to a halt. From the world media to the UN and all the powerful countries are now busy dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic.

Rohingya refugee crisis: “I want to be educated and become a doctor”

DOCTORS OF THE WORLD

News Article
3rd July 2020

Doctors of the World/Médecins du Monde is responding to COVID-19 in the sprawling refugee camps of Cox’s Bazar, southeastern Bangladesh, which are home to about one million Rohingya refugees.

Our teams work with Rohingya volunteers and our local partner PULSE Bangladesh to improve healthcare in the camps and raise awareness about COVID-19 so that residents can protect themselves.

Tasmin (not her real name) is a young Rohingya woman who has volunteered as a youth educator. She shared her story with us, just prior to COVID-19’s arrival in Cox’s Bazar.

Could The International Criminal Court Investigate Atrocities Against The Uighur Muslims In China?

Forbes
Ewelina U. Ochab
Policy
 Jul 7, 2020

Over the recent years, several news outlets reported on the dire situation of the Uighur Muslims in China who were being detained for re-education purposes. This was followed by in-depth research suggesting that the religious minority communities are subjected to modern day slavery and women are subjected to forced sterilization. Despite these severe allegations that point towards mass atrocities, as genocide or crimes against humanity, the international community has done little to ensure that the alleged atrocities are investigated and the perpetrators brought to justice. International bodies, such as the United Nations, have been greatly silent, with a few meaningless statements that do not follow with decisive actions to change the fate of the targeted communities. 

This photo taken on May 31, 2019, shows a watchtower on a high-security facility near what is ... [+] AFP via Getty Images 

Covid-19’s hidden threat in Myanmar

ASIA TIMES
by Bertil Lintner
July 7, 2020
History shows pandemics can lead to profound political change in Myanmar

Medical staff, nurses and volunteers wear protective gear amid concerns over the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus as they prepare for going door-to-door for health check-ups in Yangon on May 17, 2020. Photo: AFP/Sai Aung Main

CHIANG MAI – Covid-19 lockdowns and internal travel restrictions have been lifted across Myanmar but that doesn’t mean its virus crisis is over – far from it.

Myanmar has officially confirmed only 316 Covid-19 cases and six related deaths, figures that many observers doubt are an accurate portrayal of the nation’s underlying viral situation.

Japan’s Kirin should stop supporting Myanmar military

ASIA TIMES

Opinion

by Teppei Kasai   

July 6, 2020 

Rohingya refugees flee into Bangladesh after a military crackdown sparked a mass exodus of the Muslim minority. File Photo: AFP / Fred Dufour

 

Take a walk, watch television, or use the subway. Do any of these activities in Japan and you will likely come across a Kirin advertisement. Since its inception in 1885 as Japan Brewery, Kirin has grown into a household name in Japan, and arguably one of the world’s best-known Japanese brands.

The beverage giant offers everything from soft drinks to plum wine to yogurt. But its beer is the company’s trademark product, available in more than 40 countries. Its distinctive label depicts the legendary kirin, a magical creature “believed to be a harbinger of good luck.”

The Schoolteacher and the Genocide

The New York Times Magazine

By Sarah A. Topol

Aug. 8, 2019

He dreamed of educating the children in his village. But soon he learned that it was dangerous for the Rohingya to dream.

Futhu in the Kutupalong Rohingya refugee camps near Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. He covered his face for fear of being targeted by the authorities in Myanmar.Credit...Adam Dean for The New York Times

When he was in primary school, Futhu read a story about a girl who named her flowers. She wrote their names in a diary, logged when she planted and watered them and charted how they grew. The story was in a book Futhu’s uncle brought to their village in Myanmar’s western Rakhine State from across the border in Bangladesh — the words in English and in Bengali. Futhu was the first in his extended family to attend school — the first of 22 uncles, countless aunts and cousins — and though he excelled at Burmese and English class, he could not really understand the book on his own. His father was himself illiterate, as were most people in their community. So Futhu asked a village trader who often visited their home to read him the stories in the book, one by one.

Myanmar’s “clearance operations” dimmers hope

dailyobserver
Saturday, 4 July, 2020
Mohammad Zaman

In recent weeks, Myanmar military launched massive offensive against the Arakan Army (AA), a rebel group seeking greater autonomy for ethnic Rohingyas in Rakhine state. The month-long crackdown, according to available reports, involved indiscriminate fire and burning of villages forcing more than 10,000 people fleeing their homes. The offensive was in retaliation of the ambush carried out earlier by the AA that killed three border police and a civilian driver. According to many observers, the ultimate intent of   Myanmar is to expel the entire Rohingya population.                                                                                                 
                                                                                                                          Dr Mohammad Zaman

#rohingyalivesmatter

The New Nation
Shah Muhammad Shirajis Shadik
04th-Jul-2020

Raise Voice Against Verified Persecution

 

A public uprising is shaking the world right now, being originated in the USA, spread through the borders, amid a highly communicable COVID-19 pandemic, from the same old ghost of xenophobia that was declined in the long past. Hashtag #blacklivesmatter is now rampant on every particular media, social media along with the customary print and electronic media. The unrest is attaining its triumphs in its melee as well. Following the story, other communities of beforehand marginalized people around the world, having a longstanding history of deprivation, persecution, and oppression, are trying to focus their issues with similar hashtags as well. For example, the Indian minority Muslims are hovering their issues with hashtag #muslimlivesmatter, Kashmiri peoples' issues did come up with hashtag #kashmirilivesmatter. The overturning issues of occupied Palestinian people had its induction with hashtag #paletinianslivesmatter to protest against their occupiers.

Brands Declare Black Lives Matter, but Activists See a 'Double Standard' in Asia

VICE
Andrew Nachemson
July 2, 2020


Despite public shows of support for the movement for racial justice taking place around the world, some corporations have been complicit in racial violence in the world's most populous continent.

Arsenal's German defender Shkodran Mustafi (C) takes a knee to show support for the Black Lives Matter movement and as a protest against racism before kick off of an English Premier League football match on June 20, 2020. (Photo by Gareth Fuller / POOL / AFP) 

As countries around the world reckon with widespread protests against centuries of systemic racism, high-profile companies have found themselves scrambling to adjust to the new paradigm.

Some have scrubbed long-overlooked offensive mascots, while many others have used the platform afforded by major brand recognition to voice their support for the movement.

OP-ED: What is the future of the Rohingya?

Dhaka Tribune

Julian Francis
July 2nd, 2020

Many refugees absolutely refuse to go back to Myanmar REUTERS

Putting the worst refugee crisis of our times in historical context

On June 29, I was very glad to attend an important online discussion in recognition of World Refugee Day, which was organized by the Centre for the Study of Genocide and Justice and the Liberation War Museum.

The guest of honour was the Honourable Foreign Secretary Masud Bin Momen, who gave the keynote address, and the function was also addressed by Steven Corliss, UNHCR’s Bangladesh country representative and the country representative of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, Raquibul Amin.

China supplying funds, missiles and other sophisticated weaponry to terrorist group Arakan Army to weaken India and Myanmar: Report

OpIdia
2 July, 2020
OpIndia Staff

China had earlier this year, managed to bring in a huge consignment of weapons and ammunition through Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tracts to Myanmar. 

Arakan Army

 

News reports published in Myanmar recently have accused China of supplying sophisticated arms to Arakan Army armed group, a declared terrorist organisation in Myanmar, and other armed groups in Myanmar to have an upper hand over India and Myanmar.

According to military sources in Myanmar, approximately 95 per cent of Arakan Army funding comes from China. It further confirmed that the Arakan Army has approximately 50 MANPADS (Man-Portable Air Defense Systems) surface-to-air missiles.