Bangladesh welcomes historic consensus on OIC-sponsored Rohingya resolution

ARAB NEWS
16 November 2023
SHEHAB SUMON

Rohingya gather at a market in Bangladesh’s Kutupalong refugee camp in Ukhia on May 15, 2020. (AFP)

 

• New UN resolution was tabled by OIC and EU, co-sponsored by 144 countries
• It received the biggest international support since the beginning of Rohingya crisis

DHAKA: Bangladesh on Thursday welcomed a consensus on a UN resolution related to the repatriation to Myanmar of the 1.2 million Rohingya refugees it has sheltered for the past six years.

Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslim refugees who fled a military crackdown in Myanmar in 2017 have sought shelter in neighboring Bangladesh.

EU releases €10.5 million in humanitarian aid for people in Myanmar and Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh

European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations
16 November 2023

© WFP/Saikat Mojumder

 

Due to the deteriorating humanitarian situation, the EU has released €10.5 million in humanitarian aid to address the needs of people in Myanmar and of Rohingya refugees and their host communities living in Bangladesh.

Out of this new funding, 7 million is allocated for Myanmar, and the remaining 3.5 million for Bangladesh.

ASEAN and its 50 years of failure in ending wars and genocides

Prothomalo
Maung Zarni
Updated: 16 Jul 2023,

A worker adjusts an ASEAN flag at a meeting hall in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 28 October 2021.Reuters

Imagine John Lennon and his mates from Liverpool, strumming three acoustic guitars and leading the anti-war march in NYC or London, singing the iconic song "Give peace a chance," or Pete Seeger performing his "Where have all the flowers gone...." Who in their right mind would oppose peace or settling disputes over tea or cocktails?!! But Myanmar, my birthplace soaked in multiple violent and structural conflicts since the end of the WWII, has been a site not just of civil war and genocides - note the plural - but also of ceasefire talks, mediations, pro-peace protests, nationwide "peace dialogue" for more than 60 years.

Delegation of the European Union to the UN and other international organisations in Geneva

europa
Geneva
21 June 2023 

Press and information team of the Delegation to the UN in Geneva

HRC53 - EU Statement - Panel discussion on the measures necessary to find durable solutions to the Rohingya crisis and to end all forms of human rights violations and abuses against Rohingya Muslims and other minorities in Myanmar

 
UNITED NATIONS HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL
53th session 

2023 HRW REPORT ( MYANMAR )

HRW

2023 REPORT

• Torture, Political Executions, Deaths in Custody
• War Crimes and Other Atrocities
• Displaced Populations and Aid
• Persecution of Rohingya
• Shrinking Civic Space and Legal Challenges
• Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity
• Key International Actors

Since staging a coup on February 1, 2021, the Myanmar military has carried out a brutal nationwide crackdown on millions of people opposed to its rule. The junta security forces have carried out mass killings, arbitrary arrests, torture, sexual violence, and other abuses that amount to crimes against humanity. Freedom of speech and assembly face severe restrictions.

UN resolution offers a glimmer of hope for Rohingya?

Pakistan Today

OPINION
By Dr Arpita
November 24, 2022

Since the overwhelming exodus of Rohingya refugees to Bangladesh in 2017, the Rohingya problem has gained attention. To continue housing more than 1.1 million refugees in Bangladesh, however, is proving to be an incredibly challenging endeavor given the recent emergence of other national and international challenges.

A ray of light is provided, nonetheless, by the recent Rohingya resolution passed by the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee. The resolution was jointly introduced on November 18 by members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the European Union (EU), who all agreed that it was urgent to confront Myanmar’s reprehensible treatment of the Rohingya people and other minorities.

Bangladesh urges EU to take steps to repatriate displaced Rohingya

AA
SM Najmus Sakib, Md. Kamruzzaman
DHAKA, Bangladesh
10.11.2022

Premier Hasina informs visiting EU delegation that number of refugees increases every day as new children are born, making issue difficult to handle

Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Thursday urged the European Union (EU) to take steps to repatriate displaced Rohingya who are currently taking shelter in the country's southeast coastal district of Cox's Bazar.

Over 1.2 million persecuted Rohingya are currently housed in Bangladesh on a large hilly forest site in Cox's Bazar, after fleeing a brutal military crackdown in Myanmar in August 2017.

She emphasized the Rohingya repatriation at a meeting with a five-member EU team led by Commissioner for Home Affairs YIva Johansson at her Dhaka office.

မြန်မာနိုင်ငံဆီ ရိုဟင်ဂျာ ဒုက္ခသည်များ ဘေးကင်းစွာ ပြန်နိုင်ရေးအတွက် အီးယူ တိုက်တွန်း

မဇ္စျိမ

25 August 2022

ရိုဟင်ဂျာများအပေါ် ကျူးလွန်သည့် ရာဇဝတ်မှုများကို စုံစမ်းစစ်ဆေးရန် ဥရောပသမဂ္ဂ အီးယူက ဗုဒ္ဓဟူးနေ့တွင် တောင်းဆိုပြီး ရိုဟင်ဂျာများ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံဆီ ဘေးကင်းစွာ ပြန်နိုင်ရေးအတွက် တိုက်တွန်းပြောဆိုသည်။

အိမ်နီးချင်း ဘင်္ဂလားဒေ့ရှ်နိုင်ငံဆီ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံမှ ရိုဟင်ဂျာ အမျိုးသမီး၊ အမျိုးသားနှင့် ကလေးငယ် ၇၅၀,၀၀၀ ကျော်ထက်မနည်း ထွက်ပြေးခဲ့ကြသည့် ငါးနှစ်မြောက် ပူးတွဲထုတ်ပြန်ချက်၌ အီးယူ နိုင်ငံခြားမူဝါဒ အကြီးအကဲ ဂျိုးဆက် ဘော်ရဲလ်နှင့် အခြားသော ကော်မရှင်နာများက ရိုဟင်ဂျာများကို ထောက်ခံကြောင်း ဖော်ပြခဲ့သည်။

Commissioner Lenarčič in Bangladesh: EU provides €12 million for displaced Rohingyas in Bangladesh and Myanmar

The European Sting
by European Union
October 28, 2021

UNHCR/Roger Arnold

Thousands of new Rohingya refugee arrivals cross the border near Anzuman Para village, Palong Khali, Bangladesh.

This article is brought to you in association with the European Commission.

Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarčič is concluding today a three-day visit to Bangladesh to see the situation on the ground in the context of the worsening humanitarian crisis affecting Rohingya people. In the margins of his visit, he announced an additional €12 million in humanitarian aid funding for the Rohingya in Bangladesh and Myanmar.

Bangladesh abstains from voting against Myanmar

Prothom Alo 

Prothom Alo English Desk

Published: 20 Jun 2021, 

The United Nations logo is seen on a window in an empty hallway at United Nations headquarters during the 75th annual UN General Assembly high-level debate in New York, US, on 21 September 2020Reuters

The UN General Assembly on Friday took a rare step of calling on member states to “prevent the flow of arms” into Myanmar, which is a part of a non-binding resolution condemning the military coup in the violence-wracked country.

The resolution -- which did not go so far as to call for a global arms embargo -- also demands that the military “immediately stop all violence against peaceful demonstrators,” reports Reuters.

It was approved by 119 countries, with 36 abstaining including China, Myanmar’s main ally. Only one country, Belarus, voted against it. Bangladesh also abstained from voting.

ASEAN diplomacy in Myanmar intensifies as EU eyes more sanctions

Aljazeera

4 Jun 2021

Analyst says ASEAN diplomacy ‘dead on arrival’ while shadow opposition government seeks recognition of ethnic Rohingya as citizens.

Protesters make the three-finger salute during a demonstration against the military coup in Yangon on Thursday [Stringer/AFP]

Diplomats from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are set for talks with Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, as Myanmar enters its fifth month of crippling unrest since the military seized power on February 1 amid the increasing prospect of new sanctions from the European Union.

EU ready to help restore democracy to Myanmar - high representative

Reuters
April 30, 2021

People hold placards as they attend a protest against Myanmar's military coup in Launglon, Myanmar April 23, 2021 in this picture obtained by Reuters. DAWEI WATCH via REUTERS

The European Union is ready to offer its support to all parties to help restore democracy in Myanmar, the bloc's high representative told ASEAN states on Friday.

Southeast Asian leaders said after an emergency ASEAN summit last week that they had reached consensus with Myanmar's junta on ending violence there. read more

OP-ED: A wake-up call for Bangladesh?

Dhaka Tribune

Nisath Salsabil Rob
April 25th, 2021

In handling the Rohingya crisis, it is time Bangladesh prepared for the long haul

In the wee hours of February 1, 2021, Myanmar’s military -- the Tatmadaw -- declared a one-year state of emergency and arrested democratically elected leaders of the ruling party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), including Myanmar’s former de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, thereby putting a nail on the coffin of Myanmar’s fledgling democracy.

ASEAN calls summit on Myanmar as EU widens sanctions

REUTERS
April 20, 2021

Protesters defend themselves from the troops in Kale, Sagaing region, Myanmar March 28, 2021 in this picture taken March 28, 2021 obtained by REUTERS.

Southeast Asian countries will discuss the crisis in Myanmar at a summit in Jakarta on Saturday, but some are choosing to send ministers rather than heads of government.

The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has been trying to guide Myanmar, a member, out of the bloody turmoil triggered by the military overthrow of Aung San Suu Kyi's elected government on Feb. 1.

But the group's principles of consensus and non-interference have restricted its ability to overcome members' divergent views on how to respond to the army's killing of hundreds of civilians.

Russia and China Thwarting International Response to Myanmar Crisis: EU

KMJ NOW

AFP
11 April 2021

Russia and China are frustrating the international response to the Myanmar crisis, a top European Union diplomat said Sunday, as the death toll from a military crackdown climbed past 700.

Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military removed civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi from power on February 1.

International efforts to stem the violence have so far failed to yield results, with EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell saying Sunday it was “no surprise” that Russia and China were blocking efforts at the UN Security Council to impose an arms embargo.

EU scales up aid for Rohingya fire victims

FINANCIAL EXPRESS

FE Online Desk

Published: April 08, 2021

The European Union is providing €150,000 (close to BDT 15 million) to step up its support for Rohingya refugees affected by the massive fire that swept through refugee camps in the Bangladeshi southern district of Cox’s Bazar in March this year.

This follows the initial assistance of €500,000 announced last week as an immediate response to the blaze.

“The fire has caused many Rohingya refugees, who have lived in displacement in camps over the past three years, to yet again lose almost everything,” said Daniela D'Urso who oversees the EU’s humanitarian response in Bangladesh.

US, EU, Britain Impose Sanctions on Chinese Officials Over Uyghurs

VOA News
Updated March 22, 2021

European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell speaks to media before a EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels, on March 22, 2021.

The United States, the European Union and Britain have imposed sanctions on several Chinese officials for human rights abuses against the Muslim Uyghur minority in China’s Xinjiang province.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. sanctions were taken in solidary with U.S. allies.

“As part of their actions today, our partners also sanctioned human rights abusers in connection with the atrocities occurring in Xinjiang and other countries,” Blinken said in a statement Monday.

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.

Exclusive: EU preparing sanctions on Myanmar military businesses, documents show

REUTERS

Gabriela Baczynska, Robin Emmott
MARCH 8, 2021

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union is preparing to widen its sanctions on Myanmar’s armed forces to target businesses they run, in protest at the Feb. 1 military coup, according to diplomats and two internal documents seen by Reuters.

A woman shows a three-finger salute during a protest against the military coup in Naypyitaw, Myanmar, March 8, 2021. REUTERS/Stringer

The measures, which diplomats said could be agreed by EU foreign ministers on March 22, would target companies “generating revenue for, or providing financial support to, the Myanmar Armed Forces”, said one of the documents dated March 5.

While the bloc has an arms embargo on Myanmar, and has targeted some senior military officials since 2018, the measures would be its most significant response so far since the coup.