Uncertainty, despair grip Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh

UCA News
Updated: August 30, 2024 

Most of the estimated 1 million Rohingya refugees are frustrated with no visible sign of repatriation and poor camp life 

This photo taken on May 24 shows Rohingya refugees walking down a path at a refugee camp in Ukhia in Bangladesh's southeastern Cox's Bazar district. (Photo: AFP)

Sitting in his tiny one-room home in the congested Shalbagan refugee camp in Teknaf of Cox’s Bazar on a hot and humid monsoon day, Abu Sufian laments the loss of a relatively happy life in Myanmar's Rakhine state seven years ago.

UN World Food Program decries looting and burning of its warehouse in western Myanmar combat zone

The Washinton Post
By Associated Press
June 25, 2024 

The United Nations’ food agency has strongly condemned the looting of food supplies and burning of one of its warehouses in a war-torn area in Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine

BANGKOK — The United Nations’ food agency on Tuesday strongly condemned the looting of food supplies and burning of one of its warehouses over the weekend in a war-torn area in Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine.

A statement released by the World Food Program said the destroyed building in Rakhine’s Maungdaw township held 1,175 metric tons (1,295 U.S. tons) of food and supplies — enough to sustain 64,000 people for a month in case of an emergency.

Escaping inferno: Rohingya flee as violence escalates in Rakhine

BIG NEWS NETWORK
Khalid Umar Malik
16th June 2024, 

RAKHINE, Myanmar - Fighting between the Myanmar military and the Arakan Army (AA) has risen in the western province of Rakhine in recent days, putting thousands of predominantly Muslim Rohingya residents at risk.

According to discussions with Rohingya activists who spoke with witnesses in Buthidaung, there have been large fires throughout the town in recent days.

Rohingya Muslims Flee Violence in Myanmar as ‘Hate-Driven Unnatural Disaster Unfolds’ – Sparking Pleas for UK and US to Act

BYLINE TIMES
Steve Shaw
14 June 2024

The attack on Buthidaung – where thousands of Rohingya Muslims had sought refuge – has been called a “turning point” in what has been dubbed a “slow-burning genocide”

Rohingya women sit inside a shelter in Lhokseumawe, Aceh province, Indonesia, in December 2023. Photo: Associated Press / Alamy

 

It was late evening when the first bursts of gunfire echoed through the town of Buthidaung in western Myanmar. Soon after, dark plumes of smoke rose as home after home was set ablaze.

Myanmar’s Rohingya ‘trapped between hammer and anvil’ as junta, rebels sow terror in Rakhine

SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
Shaikh Azizur Rahman
Published: 6 Jun 2024

• Muslim minority residents ‘pushed to the wall’ as security forces and the Arakan Army target villages with arson attacks and killings 
  

A woman cooks next to destroyed houses and burned trees following fighting between Myanmar’s military and the Arakan Army in a village in Rakhine state on May 21. Photo: AFP

A fierce gunfight between Myanmar’s military and the Arakan Army (AA) rebels in Rakhine state has thrust Rohingya Muslims into a fresh spiral of organised violence as alleged beheadings and arson attacks rattle the persecuted community.

‘The entire town is burning.’ Fires rage as Rohingya caught up on the front lines of Myanmar’s civil war

CNN
Helen Regan and Avery Schmitz,
Thu May 23, 202

Satellite imagery provided by Planet Labs, PBC, taken on May 20, shows thermal scarring across Buthidaung, Myanmar.

CNN-Families of Rohingya people trapped in Myanmar’s west are desperately trying to contact loved ones after a weekend of widespread arson attacks displaced up to 200,000 people and caused extensive destruction of homes.

ရိုဟင်ဂျာဒုက္ခသည်များအပေါ် ခြိမ်းခြောက်မှုများရှိနေသည်ဟု စွပ်စွဲချက်အပေါ် AA ငြင်း

Myanmar Photo Agency
13 May 2024 By MPA CJ 012

ရခိုင်ဒေသတွင်း စစ်ရေးဖော်ဆောင်ခွင့်မရှိသော ရိုဟင်ဂျာဒေသများ၌ စစ်ရေးဖော်ဆောင်နေသလို နေရပ်ပြန်လိုသည့် ရိုဟင်ဂျာဒုက္ခသည်များအပေါ် ခြိမ်းခြောက်မှုများရှိနေသည်ဟု စွပ်စွဲပြောဆိုမှုများအပေါ် AA က ငြင်းဆိုခဲ့သည်။

တက်ကြွလှုပ်ရှားသူများက လူမျိုးရေးကို ခုတုံးလုပ်ကာ ကိုယ်ကျိုးရှာနေကြောင်း AA ခေါင်းဆောင်ပြော

Myanmar Photo Agency
12 May 2024 By MPA CJ 012 

ရခိုင်ဒေသတွင်း တိုက်ပွဲများကြောင့် ရခိုင်ဒေသရှိ ရခိုင်လူမျိုးများနှင့် ရိုဟင်ဂျာလူမျိုးများကြား လူမျိုးရေးပဋိပက္ခများနှင့် ပတ်သက်ပြီး ဝေဖန်မှုများ မြင့်တက်နေချိန်တွင် ရက္ခိုင့်တပ်တော်၏ ခေါင်းဆောင် ဗိုလ်ချုပ်ထွန်းမြတ်နိုင်က တက်ကြွလှုပ်ရှားသူများအနေဖြင့် လူမျိုးရေးအား ခုတုံးလုပ်ကာ ကိုယ်ကျိုးရှာနေကြောင်း ၎င်း၏ တွစ်တာစာမျက်နှာမှတစ်ဆင့် ပြောဆိုလိုက်သည်။

ဘင်္ဂါလီ ၅ ယောက်ကို AA က ဖမ်းဆီးသတ်ဖြတ်ပြီး စစ်ရာဇဝတ်မှုကျူးလွန်ဟု FRC ပြော

PCT News
April 29, 2024

( ရေးသားမှု အစွန်းရောက်သော်လည်း မှတ်တမ်းအဖြစ် ရေးမှတ်ထားခြင်းဖြစ်ပါသည် )

မောင်တောမြို့နယ်၊ သရက်အုပ်ကျေးရွာအုပ်စု၊ အဘူဂျာကျေးရွာက ဘင်္ဂါလီရွာသား ၅ ယောက်ကို ဧပြီလ ၁၇ ရက်နေ့မှာ AA ရခိုင်လက်နက်ကိုင်တပ်ဖွဲ့ဝင်တွေက ဖမ်းဆီးသွားခဲ့ပြီး ဧပြီလ ၂၂ ရက်နေ့မှာ AA ဖမ်းဆီးသွားတဲ့ လူ ၅ ယောက်ရဲ့ ရုပ်အလောင်းတွေကို ရွာသားအချို့က တွေ့ခဲ့ပြီး AA က သတ်ဖြတ်လိုက်တယ်လို့ FRC အဖွဲ့က ရိုနေဆန်းလွင်က လူမှုကွန်ရက်မှာ ရေးသားထားပါတယ်။

Do Rohingyas Have a Place in Myanmar’s Revolution?

BFM
Ro Nay San Lwin, Rohingya Activist
20-Mar-24

There is a revolution ongoing in Myanmar. The people of Myanmar of various political ideologies and regions are engaging in civil disobedience and have also taken up arms against the military junta. There’s been talk about forging a new constitution and building a new Myanmar beyond and free from the junta.

ကျနော်တို့ရဲ့ ဘုံရန်သူဟာ စစ်တပ်ဖြစ်တယ်

ဧရာဝတီ
စောမေရီ
23 March 2024

ရက္ခိုင့်တပ်တော် (AA) နဲ့တိုက်ပွဲတွေမှာ စစ်ရှုံးနေတဲ့ စစ်ကောင်စီဟာ ရခိုင်ပြည်နယ်ထဲက ရိုဟင်ဂျာတွေကို အသုံး ချပြီး လူမျိုးရေး၊ ဘာသာရေး ပဋိပက္ခဖန်တီးနေတယ်လို့ ရိုဟင်ဂျာလွတ်မြောက်ရေးညွန့်ပေါင်းအဖွဲ့ (FRC) ပူးတွဲတည်ထောင်သူ ရိုနေဆန်းလွင် က ဧရာဝတီနဲ့ သီးသန့် မေးမြန်းခန်းမှာ ပြောဆိုလိုက်ပါတယ်။

Will Myanmar’s Militias Relinquish Control After Victory?

zenith
Analysis
by Philipp Peksaglam
04.03.2024
Politics

Paul Vrieze / Voice of America

Myanmar’s junta has been on the back foot for quite some time now. The militias waging a civil war against the central government are gaining ground and start to plan the post-war order. Yet one ethnic minority remains marginalized.

Myanmar’s generals do not have much to celebrate these days. February 1st did present an occasion for any Putschists in a particularly festive mood: the three-year anniversary of the military coup. The 2021 takeover of the elected government of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi permanently ended the generals’ brief flirt with democratic governance. Ever since, the conflict between the Tatmadaw, as the military is known, and regional ethnic insurgents dominates life in Myanmar.

Over a dozen Rohingya killed in Myanmar army attacks: Activist

AA
Islam Uddin, ANKARA
27.01.2024 

Dozens others also injured in shelling in last 2 days, says co-founder of Free Rohingya Coalition

FILE PHOTO

Over a dozen Rohingya Muslims were killed in Myanmar army's artillery attacks in the country's western Rakhine state, said a human rights activist on Saturday.

Why Rohingya refugees choose Indonesia as a safe haven

Dhaka Tribune
Deutsche Welle
Publish : 02 Dec 2023

Rohingya Muslims walk through waters after they are temporarily allowed by locals to land in Ulee Madon beach, in Indonesia on November 16, 2023. Photo: Reuters

An increasing number of Rohingya refugees are leaving the crowded camps of Cox’s Bazar, making the 1,800-kilometer sea crossing south to Indonesia in rickety boats.

Indonesian police and fishermen said last week they have begun patrolling parts of Aceh province, on the northwestern tip of Sumatra, to prevent the landing of refugee boats. Over 1,000 Rohingya have arrived last month, the largest number since 2015.

UNHCR: Rakhine not safe for Myanmar’s Rohingya repatriation pilot project

Benar News
BenarNews and RFA Burmese
Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh and Dhaka

2023.03.15

Rohingya refugees wait to be interviewed by Myanmar officials in Teknaf, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, March 15, 2023.

[BenarNews]

The United Nations refugee agency said Wednesday that conditions in Myanmar’s Rakhine state were not favorable for the safe return of 1,000 Rohingya from Bangladesh whom Myanmar wants to repatriate under a China-mediated program.

A delegation from Myanmar arrived in the Bangladeshi border town of Teknaf on Wednesday to begin interviewing Rohingya in an effort to clear their return to Rakhine, from where they fled following a brutal 2017 military crackdown.

Cyclone Mocha Claimed 400 Lives in Myanmar

eman channel
18.05.2023

Cyclone Mocha Claims Over 400 Lives in Myanmar’s Rakhine State

Myanmar’s Rakhine state has been devastated by Cyclone Mocha, resulting in the tragic loss of more than 400 lives, according to a report released on Wednesday by the Arakan Rohingya National Alliance (RNA), a rights group. The cyclone made landfall on Sunday, hitting the coast between Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar district and Myanmar’s Kyaukpyu township.

When the Myanmar Regime is Defeated, the Future of the Rohingya Will Become Clear

The Irrawaddy
26 December 2022

Rohingya Muslim refugee children gather around a water pump at the Thankhali refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh on November 25, 2017. / AFP

U Nay San Lwin is the co-founder of the Germany-based Free Rohingya Coalition, but better known on social media as Ro Nay San Lwin. Known for his Rohingya activism, he has described the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) as criminals who kill their own kind. U Nay San Lwin talked recently to The Irrawaddy about the Spring Revolution against the military dictatorship and the conflict in Rakhine State.

Sanctions Won't Hurt Myanmar's Brutal Leaders, Activists Say. Here's What Could

TIME
CHAD DE GUZMAN
FEBRUARY 1, 2022 

Protesters hold banners and shout slogans while marching past Myanmar military soldiers who arrived to guard the Central Bank overnight on Feb. 15, 2021 in Yangon, Myanmar. The U.S. Embassy in Myanmar told Americans in Myanmar to "shelter in place" in an announcement after military movements and reports of possible interruptions to telecoms. Armored vehicles were seen on the streets of Myanmar's capital, but protesters turned out in force despite the military presence. Hkun Lat—Getty Images

The U.S. imposed new sanctions on senior leaders of Myanmar’s military junta on Monday—the eve of the one-year anniversary of their overthrow of the country’s democratically elected government and imprisonment of its leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.

The U.S., joined by the U.K., and Canada, announced sanctions on officials who helped prosecute Aung San Suu Kyi, the head of the National League for Democracy. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate was arrested in the Feb. 1, 2021 coup. Myanmar courts have sentenced her to a total of six years in prison as of Jan. 10—but she faces additional charges.

Rohingya rights bodies denounce insurgent group ARSA

AA
Md. Kamruzzaman
DHAKA, Bangladesh
07.12.2021

Joint statement calls for improving system of providing protection at refugee camps in Bangladesh

Dozens of Rohingya rights organizations on Tuesday denounced the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), an insurgent group recently involved in killing Rohingya at refugee camps in southeastern Bangladesh.

“The Rohingya community does not accept ARSA as a group that represents the ideals and interests of them in or outside of Burma (Myanmar). Thus, the group must not claim it represents the interests of the Rohingya nation,” said a joint statement signed by 22 Rohingya rights organizations, including the Arakan Rohingya National Organization (ARNO), the European Rohingya Council (ERC) and the Free Rohingya Coalition (FRC).

Rohingya: Tripartite moot raises hopes, skepticism

AA

SM Najmus Saki 

DHAKA, Bangladesh

16.01.2021 

Bangladesh hosting tripartite meeting on Rohingya repatriation bringing China, Myanmar to table on Jan. 19 

Bangladeshi Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen

Bangladesh is going to host an important tripartite meeting on the Rohingya repatriation issue, which has been frozen for a year, bringing China and Myanmar to the table on Jan. 19.

The last tripartite meeting was held on Jan. 20 last year in New York, and since then Myanmar has been allegedly postponing the bilateral talks despite repeated attempts by Bangladesh.

Bangladesh Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen said it will be a secretary-level tripartite meeting and hopefully it will be productive. However, he averred that “repatriation is the only solution to end the Rohingya crisis, and there will be no alternative.”