Displacement and Discrimination

SOUTHASIA
Gulnaz Nawaz
October 2023 

The future of the Rohingya population residing in Cox’s Bazar is characterised by a state of uncertainty. 

For almost six years, the picturesque Bangladeshi seaside town of Cox’s Bazar has been at the epicentre of a dire humanitarian catastrophe that has captured the world’s attention. Unfortunately, this critical problem has not been addressed despite extensive media attention. The Rohingya people are at the heart of this continuing crisis because they escaped persecution and violence in Myanmar and sought refuge in Bangladesh.

Systematic discrimination facing Rohingya prevents from living safe, dignified lives: Rita French

ASSOCIATED PRESS OF PAKISTAN
June 30, 2020

LONDON, Jun 30 (APP):The United Kingdom (UK)’s International Ambassador for Human Rights, Rita French Monday said the systematic discrimination facing the Rohingya in Myanmar prevents them from living safe and dignified lives.

She delivered this statement during the Interactive Dialogue on the High Commissioner’s oral update on the situation of human rights of Rohingya people.

According to a UK government’s statement, she said the UK is deeply concerned by the restrictions Rohingya face on their freedom of movement. In recent months restrictions have increased. Noting that Covid-19 creates legitimate, albeit limited, reasons for restrictions, these are disproportionately affecting Rohingya.

Myanmar Anti-Hate Speech Orders Aimed at Halting Discrimination Against Rohingya

Radio Free Asia
2020-05-04

Myanmar government spokesman Zaw Htay speaks during a press conference at the Presidential Palace in Naypyidaw, Jan. 7, 2019. Credit: AFP

 

The government of Myanmar has ordered all civil servants to stop using hate speech on social media, a persistent problem in the majority Buddhist country, nearly three years after soldiers and local militias drove more than 740,000 Muslim Rohingya into neighboring Bangladesh.

The order, announced by President’s Office Spokesperson Zaw Htay, requires that civil servants monitor and report online behavior to the central government. Critics say the move might be an attempt to clean up Myanmar’s image ahead of future international hearings on the alleged genocide of Rohingya in the country’s western Rakhine state.

Gandhi would be fasting against India’s discriminatory new citizenship law

The Washington Post  

By Barkha Dutt

October 8 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid tribute to Mahatma Gandhi during a ceremony in Parliament in New Delhi on Oct. 2. (Money Sharma/AFP via Getty Images)

 

India is celebrating the 150th birthday of Mahatma Gandhi with widespread tributes. Such was the moral force of the father of the nation’s nonviolence agitation for independence against the British, that he remains the one historical figure about whom little political disagreement is permissible.

Writing in the New York Times recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Gandhi “envisioned Indian nationalism as one that was never narrow or exclusive but one that worked for the service of humanity."

Integration should not be a one-way street

Frontier
MYANMAR
Opinion
Saturday, August 03, 2019
By THAN TOE AUNG | FRONTIER

Advocates of interfaith harmony gather at central Yangon's Mahabandoola Park in May 2016. (Steve Tickner | Frontier)  

It’s time for us to embrace the idea that you can wear a beard, kurta or hijab, and have a Muslim name, and still be fully Burmese.

ONE OF Burma’s most prominent monks, Sitagu Sayadaw, once observed that Muslims are “guests” and Buddhists are “hosts”, and that “the guests must obey the hosts”. Similarly, I have heard Buddhists say that Muslims in Burma (a name I use in preference to Myanmar) need to respect Buddhist culture and “assimilate” into it.

United colours of discrimination

THE MOURNG EXPRESS
April 1, 2019
Morung Express News
Bali (Indonesia) | March 31

Khin Mg Myint, Kevin Halim, Nasreen Habib and Dena Rachman share experiences of discrimination at the regional seminar and workshop held for journalists in Bali from March 18-20. (Photo courtesy: the Journalists Association for Diversity, Sejuk)

Rohingya, Transgender, Assamese Bengali Muslim share stories as persecuted minorities 



It is genocide. Khin Mg Myint of the Harmony Working Group, Myanmar (Burma), shows no sign of doubt while speaking about the persecution that the Rohingya people from the Rakhine state of Myanmar have been undergoing for decades now.

People Flee Escalating Violence in Myanmar's Rakhine, Southern Chin States.

VOA NEWS
February 10, 2019,
By: Lisa Schlein

A Mro ethnic women with child displaced from the surge of fighting between ethnic armed rebel group of the Arakan Army and government troops take refuge at a compound of a Buddhist pagoda in Buthidaung township in the restive Rakhine state, Jan. 25, 2019.

GENEVA — The U.N. refugee agency says it is worried by reports of people fleeing escalating violence in Myanmar's southern Chin State and Rakhine State, adding to growing instability in these regions.