The ‘Night Government’ Expands Its Violent Reach in Rohingya Camps

The New York Times
By Verena Hölzl
Reporting from Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh
March 30, 2024,

Gunfights, kidnappings and homicides have become widespread in the refugee settlements in Bangladesh, as armed groups and criminal gangs have become more brazen.

A Rohingya refugee camp, along the Naf River, near Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, in November.Credit...Munir Uz Zaman/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

 

They could not worship freely. The authorities denied their very existence and razed evidence of their historical communities. Then came a campaign of ethnic cleansing that forced them to flee to a foreign country where they crowded into bamboo-and-tarp shelters. There they have waited years for a better life.

India says new law saves persecuted refugees. Rohingya ask ‘Why not us?’

Aljazeera
By Gurvinder Singh
Published On 27 Mar 2024

 As New Delhi claims to help persecuted minorities in South Asia through the law, the mainly Muslim refugees from Myanmar face deportation.

Rohingya live in India under constant threat of crackdown and deportation [Handout via Al Jazeera]

Kolkata, India – Muhammad Hamin has been unable to sleep at night since March 8 when the government of the northeast Indian state of Manipur ordered the deportation of Rohingya refugees.

Myanmar Junta ‘Orchestrating Rohingya Protests’ Against Arakan Army in Rakhine

The Irrawaddy
by Hein Htoo Zan
March 22, 2024

Rohingya stage a protest against the Arakan Army in Buthidaung, Rakhine State on Tuesday. / Han Nyein Oo

 

Myanmar’s military regime is orchestrating Rohingya protests against the Arakan Army to sow ethnic division in Rakhine State, according to a Rohingya activist, an ethnic Rakhine politician, and community leaders.

Illegal Rohingyas have no fundamental right to reside in India, asserts govt in SC

THE ECONOMIC TIMES
Mar 20, 2024,

 

The Union government has made a significant statement regarding the status of illegal Rohingya Muslim migrants in the country. In a submission to the Supreme Court, the government asserted that these migrants do not possess a fundamental right to reside and settle in India. It emphasized that the judiciary should not encroach upon the legislative and policy domains of the Parliament and executive to create a separate category for granting refugee status to such individuals. 

UN chief decries violence in Myanmar as 25 Rohingya killed in airstrikes

TRTWORLD
19 March 2024 

Myanmar's military is increasingly using airstrikes to counter the widespread armed struggle against its rule since its seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021. 

Reuters Archive

Soldiers stand next to military vehicles as people gather to protest against the military coup, in Yangon, Myanmar. / Photo: Reuters Archive

Military airstrikes in western Myanmar killed at least 25 members of the country’s Muslim Rohingya minority, including children, local media reported, prompting the UN chief to express concerns over the escalating violence.

Over 20 Rohingya Villagers Killed as Myamar Junta Warplane Attacks Village in Rakhine

The Irrawaddy

March 19, 2024

Houses hit by a junta bombing raid in Thardar Village, Minbya Township / APM

Twenty-three Rohingya residents were killed and 33 injured in an unprovoked bombing raid by the military regime on Monday in Minbya Township in western Myanmar’s Rakhine State, according to residents. A junta warplane dropped two bombs early Monday morning on Thardar Village, residents said. A faith leader and his wife, and a number of children, were among the 23 victims killed.

Rohingya trapped in the middle of Myanmar’s escalating conflict

The New Humanitarian
Analysis, San Thai Shin
19 March 2024 

‘They have oppressed us throughout history, and it has been a decade that they've detained us, like in this internment camp.’ 

Soldiers take part in a military parade in Myanmar's capital, Naypyitaw, on 27 March 2019. A junta seized power on 1 February 2021, but opposition armed groups have enjoyed a string of recent battleground gains. 

 

Editor’s note: San Thai Shin is the Burmese name for a Rohingya person living in Bangladesh's refugee camps. He is a researcher and a columnist, and prefers to write under his Burmese name in order to speak and report freely. 

Hellfire and Damnation in Myanmar: Ex-World Bank Country Head Recounts Rohingya Catastrophe Response

The Irrawaddy
David Scott Mathieson
March 16, 2024

Damned If You Do. Foreign Aid and My Struggle to Do Right in Myanmar by Ellen Goldstein

 

The crisis in Myanmar’s Rakhine State gripped the decade of the “democratic opening”, as state oppression of the Rohingya Muslim minority surged in 2012, culminating in the 2016 and 2017 mass expulsion that drove over 700,000 people into Bangladesh. The crisis severely affected many other parts of Myanmar in ways not fully appreciated at the time, much of it exacerbated by the cruel disregard of the military who perpetrated the ethnic cleansing, and by the obtuse arrogance of State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD). The international community didn’t exactly shower itself in glory either, but as usual, found a way to exonerate its own complicity, corruption, cowardice and incompetence.

How Should Bangladesh Handle Myanmar’s Fleeing Soldiers?

THEIDIPLOMAT
By Shahariar Sadat and Arafat Reza
March 15, 2024

More and more Myanmar troops are seeking refuge in Bangladesh. Dhaka can use this situation to its advantage.

Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) personnel detain Myanmar Border Guard Police (BGP) and security forces seeking refuge in Cox’s Bazar district in Banglades

On February 6, 264 members of Myanmar’s border and security forces took shelter in Bangladesh to escape heavy fighting between Myanmar’s army and the Arakan Army. They were disarmed by the members of Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) and taken to a safe shelter. Those who sustained critical injuries were given treatment at local hospitals.

Rohingya pawns in Myanmar’s cynical conscription drive

ASIA TIME
Syeda Noshin Sharmily
March 15, 2024

Junta offering rice, salaries and ID cards to internally displaced Rohingya to join the military in failing regime’s latest sign of desperation 

Rohingya refugees walk after crossing the Naf river from Myanmar into Bangladesh in Whaikhyang. Photo: Asia Times Files / AFP / Fred Dufour

Faced with a decline in authority and mounting territorial losses, Myanmar’s beleaguered junta has resorted to a controversial new war-fighting strategy: conscripting Rohingya Muslims under the auspices of a new People’s Military Service Law.

၄၅ နှစ်ကျော်အကြာ ဘင်္ဂလားဒေ့ရှ် ဒုက္ခသည်စခန်းများမှ ရိုဟင်ဂျာများ

ဧရာဝတီ
သူ့အတွေး သူ့အမြင်
Tony Waters နှင့် R.J. Aung
14 March 2024

ဘင်္ဂလားဒေ့ရှ်နိုင်ငံ၊ ကောက်ဘဇားရှိ ကူတူပါလောင် ဒုက္ခသည်စခန်းတွင် ဆန်၊ ရေနှင့် စားသုံးဆီ ရရှိရန် စောင့်ဆိုင်းနေကြသည့် ရိုဟင်ဂျာ ဒုက္ခသည်များ / AFP 

ရိုဟင်ဂျာများကို ပြန်လည် ပို့ဆောင်ရေး ဖြစ်နိုင်ခြေနှင့် ပတ်သက်ပြီး စိုးရိမ်ပူပန်မှုများကို ဘင်္ဂလားဒေ့ရှ် ဝန်ကြီးချုပ်က ထုတ်ဖော်ပြောကြားပြီး တလအကြာတွင် မြန်မာမှ ကုလသမဂ္ဂ ဒုက္ခသည်များဆိုင်ရာ မဟာမင်းကြီးရုံး (UNHCR) မှ ကိုယ်စားလှယ်များသည် ရိုဟင်ဂျာများ နေရပ်ပြန်ပို့ရေး ဆွေးနွေးရန် စစ်ကောင်စီ ပညာရေးဝန်ကြီးကို ဖေဖော်ဝါရီလ ၇ ရက်နေ့တွင် သွားရောက်တွေ့ဆုံသည်။

A ring-fence around the Rohingya can’t last – Australia’s policy needs to change

the interpreter
Published 13 Mar 2024 

Last year, I wrote in The Interpreter about the nightmare scenario unfolding for the Rohingya living in refugee camps in Bangladesh, where dwindling aid, a dependent population, and unprecedented outbreaks of disease reached unacceptable and inhumane levels. Today, the situation has not changed. A deeper look at Australia’s aid agenda is required.

‘They have lists of everyone’s names’: Myanmar conscription law unleashes wave of fear

GENOCIDE WATCH
By Rebecca Ratcliffe and Aung Naing Soe
Date : 11th March'2025 

Potential conscripts fear they could be forced to carry out atrocities or be used as human shields by the military 

Military officers on Armed Forces Day in Naypyitaw, Myanmar, 27 March 2023. Many in Myanmar have expressed alarm at the conscription law. Photograph: Aung Shine Oo/AP

 

Passport offices and embassies in Myanmar have been flooded with applications, with a queue of more than a thousand people on a single day trying to secure a visa for neighbouring Thailand. Helplines offering advice on ways to leave the country – how to manage checkpoints, what documents are needed – have been inundated.

What is the future for the Rohingya in Arakan State?

DVB
By CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS
Guest contributor
Pacifist Farooq
March 11, 2024

Since the resumption of fighting between the Myanmar military and the Arakan Army (AA) on Nov. 13 after a year-long unofficial ceasefire, the Rohingya community has become more vulnerable than ever, compounding the already alarming humanitarian catastrophe in the region.

The Rohingya in Cox’s Bazar: 45 Years On

The Irrawaddy
by Tony Waters and R.J. Aung
March 6, 2024

Rohingya refugees wait to receive supplies of rice, water and cooking oil at the Kutupalong refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar. /AFP

A month after the prime minister of Bangladesh raised concerns about the possibility of Rohingya repatriation, UNHCR representatives in Myanmar met with the junta’s education minister on February 7 to discuss repatriation. Meanwhile, Bangladeshi officials are reluctant to act in any way that might be perceived as taking sides between the junta and the ethnic Arakan Army; Bangladesh has perhaps started to understand there is a new sheriff in Rakhine, just across the Naf River.

Death, abuse and torture: traffickers hold fleeing Rohingya to ransom for up to £3,000 a time

The Guardian
Kaamil Ahmed and Verena Hölzl in Cox's Bazar
Tue 5 Mar 2024 

People trapped in the world’s largest refugee camp hope to seek new lives elsewhere despite threats facing them as they attempt to leave Bangladesh 

An overloaded boat holding about 250 Rohingya refugees in Ulee Madon, Aceh province, Indonesia, 16 November 2023.   Photograph: Amanda Jufrian/AFP/Getty Images

Even as dehydration was getting to their passengers, the traffickers using boats to carry hundreds of Rohingya away from refugee camps in Bangladesh thrust phones into their hands and demanded they ask their relatives for money.

Myanmar is on notice: killings must end now

THE NATIONAL NEWS
N OPINION

The International Court of Justice has ordered Naypyidaw to preserve evidence and prevent further atrocities

President of the International Court of Justice, Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf (4-R), ruled in the lawsuit filed by The Gambia against Myanmar, during a court session in The Hague, The Netherlands, 23 January 2020. That country is accused of genocide because of the persecution of a Muslim minority in the country. Robin Van Lonkhuijsen / EPA 

Gambia is a nation of just two million people, covering an area of around 10,000 square kilometres sandwiched between Senegal and the Atlantic Ocean. Yet since last year, the West African country has been on a grand mission to put an end to crimes dating back to 2017, allegedly committed by the government of Myanmar, a nation of more than 53 million people, against the Rohingya, a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority in Rakhine, one of Myanmar’s constituent states.

The Rohingya in the shadow of the Arakan army

Dhaka Tribune
Shafiur Rahman
Publish : 02 Mar 2024,

There is a complex level of conflict and suffering that continue to enshroud the Rohingya community 

“Instead of getting killed at the frontline by taking up arms for the junta, we would rather fight them and join the Arakan Army (AA).”

Junta troops abduct 40 relatives of Muslim camp residents who fled conscription

RFA
Radio Free Asia
March 3 2024 

Some were publicly beaten for allegedly speaking to the media about recruitment efforts.

People walk through Kyauk Ta Lone camp in Kyaukphyu, Rakhine state, Oct. 3, 2019.
Ye Aung Thu/AFP

Junta troops in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state have beaten and abducted 40 family members of Muslim displaced camp residents who escaped being conscripted into military training, sources said Friday.

Where is India Heading to?

COUNTER CURRENTS.ORG
by Habib Siddiqui
24/02/2024

India is going through a phenomenal transformation politically, socially, and religiously. It is exciting. But it is also scary and quite different than the popular image of a Nehru-Gandhi’s India.